


Shield-maiden

by daughteroflilith



Series: The Moũsai Saga [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: F/F, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Offscreen Rape of a Non Primary Character, Polyamory Sort Of, Prostitution Sort Of, Science Fiction, Shieldmaidens, Space Marines, Threesome - F/F/F, War, f/f - Freeform, multiple sexual partners, shield-maiden
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-17
Updated: 2019-05-15
Packaged: 2019-10-30 11:21:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 22
Words: 89,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17827616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daughteroflilith/pseuds/daughteroflilith
Summary: "If there is one thing in my life which I may say I am proud of it was being shieldmaiden and companion to the brave women of the Forty-Second Marine Unit of the Terra Nuevan Military. I served them as best I could and everything I did, I did for love of them."Memoirs of a Terra Nuevan shield-maiden placed with an all female unit.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> New Notes: Note: This story originally appeared in my other account Wanderingstoryteller. I've migrated it to my second account Daughteroflilith so that all my original writing will be in one place. It shares a universe with several works already in the Daughteroflilith account and that was causing some mild confusion.
> 
>  
> 
> Original Notes: This one of the odder things I've ever written. It's basically a combination of Oliver Twist, All Quiet on the Western Front, and Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, all wrapped up in a sci-fi bow. 
> 
> It's a bit plot heavy for erotica and a bit too dirty for a regular novel so I've never had any idea what to do with it. Enjoy and let me know what you think.
> 
> The first sex scene will be in chapter 3

Some have called me a war hero, some have called me a traitor, and plenty have called me a whore. People will say what they will and I am not ashamed of the life I have led. As to whether I am a hero or a traitor, I will leave that to others to debate. As to being a whore, I certainly don’t deny that, it was my profession.

If there is one thing in my life which I may say I am proud of it was being shieldmaiden and companion to the brave women of the Forty-Second Marine Unit of the Terra Nuevan Military. I served them as best I could and everything I did, I did for love of them. 

It is in their honor that I set down this memoir, so that the memory of them will not fade when I pass from this world. To tell their stories though, I must first begin with my own. 

My beginning in life was as inauspicious as any has ever been. I was born in a brothel in the slums of the Capital City of Terra Nueva, the daughter of a common prostitute. My father could have been anyone. 

My mother loved me and took care of me as best she could. We were often cold and hungry but that didn’t matter. She kept me safe from her clients and never let the madame sell me, which was more than most of the women there did for their children.

She caught something bad when I was five, probably the pox. Treated early it was a thing that could be cured but the medicines were expensive, more than a slum whore could buy and in the advanced stages it could not be cured.

She sickened quickly. I can still remember that horrible morning my mother woke me in our frigid matchbox of a room and bundled me up in what winter clothing I had. Her cough sounded worse that morning. Every time she covered her mouth with a cloth it came away stained dark red.

She led me by the hand through the ice slick streets of the waking city until we came to a great concrete building and then we went around the back and stood beside a doorway. She pulled me into her arms crying. She kissed me and told me to be a good girl. She wrapped her own ragged blue shawl around me and told me that she loved me, that she’d come back for me if she could.

Then she knocked on the door and a grey haired matronly looking woman answered. I don’t remember what my mother said to her but I remember that my mother gave her a small bag that clinked with credit chips. Then she hugged me one more time and told me to go with the woman. 

I didn’t believe she’d really leave me until she turned to walk away. The woman took my hand to lead me back into the dark hallway. I know I screamed and cried and called for my mother. She never looked back as she walked away, her thin shoulders slumped against the morning chill.

In that moment, as I child, I felt that she had utterly abandoned me. As a grown woman, I now realize that she was saving me. She was on death's door, once a pox victim begins to cough blood they only have days. If she’d left me in the brothel the Madame would have sold me the moment my mother was dead, probably to a whorehouse that specialized in children. In her last act, she took me to a state orphanage with the hope that they wouldn’t abuse me.

I don’t know what happened to her after that, she probably went to a charity hospital to die. They never cured their patients but they were always generous with their generic morphine for the dying.

My memories of that first day in the orphanage are painfully clear. The woman who brought me in was not warm but neither was she cruel. Perhaps the money my mother had given her had softened her heart.

She saw me washed and fed and dressed in a plain grey smock. When she tried to take away my mother’s shawl I screamed and screamed until she gave up and said I could keep it.

The orphanage was a crowded and utilitarian place but there were worse places a girl child could have ended up. I lived in a dormitory with a hundred other girls. My clothes were thin and the place had no heat in the winter. The food was mostly a sort of a protein gruel and hard bread, enough to sustain life but not to let it thrive.

I was never truly mistreated, certainly never beaten harshly. All the same, the cainning across the open palms or legs that children received in the orphanage for any and all perceived misdeeds came as a shock to me. My mother had never raised a hand against me.

All of the children once they were no longer mewling babes they were set to work for most of the hours of the day. I spent most of my childhood piecing together government communication boxes in the orphanages factory wing. 

I did get some education though, about an hour a day. By the time I reached fifteen I could read and write and do a few basic sums, which was more than I might have learned in other places.

Through my years in the orphanage I had the close friendships of several other girls my own age. A few of our kinder minders were also our allies. Most were worn, tried eyed women, who’d seen too many hungry children to really care anymore. Sometimes though the newer ones could be cajoled by smiles and please to provide a bit more food or failing that a story.

As far as I know no one ever came seeking to adopt children. Maybe the newborns that were sometimes left on the steps found better homes but no one wanted the slum rats discarded children.

The government though, they had uses for us. Every so often a few men or women in well pressed black suits would come and the caretakers would line us up for inspection. I don’t know all the things they took children for but we all always secretly hoped they’d choose us.

The military in their crisp uniforms came as well. Every year they looked over the older boys and girls, the ones who were about fifteen or sixteen looking for potential trainees to take the academy. No one could become a soldier until they came of age at eighteen, but they could enter an academy at a younger age.

I never had much hope of the recruiters noticing me, they wanted the strong and tall children. I was slight, always had been and never all that healthy. I was often prone to coughs and sicknesses and if it had not been for the kindness of one of my caregivers, Ms. Black, who would secret in medicine for me, I’d have probably died during my first years in the orphanage.

I knew vaguely that sometimes they also took a few of the older girls and boys who were the better looking sort, even if they were slight or not likely to make good soldiers. But I paid as little mind to those rumors as I did my own blooming body. With a flurry of growth spurts I came into my first blood and my once flat chest and hips began to change.

It should come as something of a cliché that my first lover was the girl I shared a bed with. No one got a bed of their own, quarters were too cramped for that. Her name was Maggie and she was a year older than me. We’d been fast friends since we’d first met and since childhood often slept arm and arm for warmth. That year though we began to discover just how many other kinds of warmth we could create between us.

In the quiet dark of the dormitory we tried very, very hard stifle the sounds of our kisses and then later…other sounds. We learned together how to bring each other pleasure and just what one girl could do for another.

We knew of the idea of love, even love between women from the cheap penny dreadful romance novels some of the older girls read. Those stories were between, nobles and rich people, dashing soldiers and maidens, not slum girls. We never spoke words of love even if we might have begun to feel such a thing in our hearts.

The year I turned sixteen, the representative for the military finally noticed me when she and her two escorts came. As always they separated some of the older boys and girls to send to the academy and then they began to select a few of the other one’s for something else. 

I can still remember when the golden haired woman in the dark blue uniform stopped in front of me where I stood in the line of girls. She looked me slowly up and down, as if considering a purchase. There was no lust in her eyes but her gaze was not innocent.

I nearly jerked away she touched my face and tilted my chin up. Examining my face from all angles she said, “You’ll never be beautiful but you might pass for pretty which is more than soldier need, so long as you’re warm. Tell me girl, can you be obedient and serve, would you like to be a  shield-maiden?”

I cast my eyes down. I had learned long ago never to meet an adult’s eyes. “I do as I am told…I do not know what a  shield-maiden is.”

She laughed, “you’ll know soon enough.”

That day the woman from the military took me along with the other children from the orphanage. I had only a moment to run back to my room and gather my things, nothing more than a penny dreadful book, a comb, a hair clip and gather it all up in my mother’s faded shawl. I kissed Maggie one last time in the doorway before I ran down the stairs. I never saw her again.

They took twelve of us, nine for soldiers and three girls for something else. We all sat nervously in the back of the van they placed us in. There were no windows as we sped to somewhere.

We stopped and were let out in some big compound and all separated. I was told to dress in a thin paper gown and led away to a confusing flurry of examinations. Doctors and nurses in clean white coats poked and prodded me on a metal table and looked at parts of myself that no one but Maggie had ever touched before.

A nurse with a clipboard asked me a long series of questions ending with.

“Have you had sexual relations before?”

“What?”

“Have you fucked anyone?” she said with a tired sigh.

“I guess so.”

“How many men?”

I hunched in on myself, “no men, just a girl.”

The nurse blinked and made a note on her clipboard.

“Just one?”

I nodded. 

She turned and yelled to another woman in a lab coat, “Hey Jill, go get the psych analysis equipment I want to check this one’s orientation. “

A few minutes later I was in another room with a couple things stuck to my head looking at a screen where things that I normally only read about in penny dreadful novels were happening with people. I half died from embarrassment but apparently the doctors got whatever they wanted from the funny electrodes on my head.

When the same nurse helped undo the electrodes she looked amused, “well what do you know, you’re only oriented towards women.”

“What?” I seemed to be saying that a lot.

She rolled her eyes, “trust me honey, it’s a good thing. It’s a lot better to be a shieldmaiden for an all female unit than a male one. Women usually treat their comfort providers better than men do.”

I had no idea what she was talking about. She shrugged and gave me an ID card with my picture on a lanyard that I could put around my neck. A minder came for me and took me to the supply depot where a bored looking man looked at my ID card, asked my clothes size and gave me a pile of soft blue shirts and pants. He also gave me a red plastic bracelet with a chip on it.

“Put this on kid and don’t take if off, it is your designation.”

I was reunited with the other girls from the orphanage and a lot of other ones too in a dormitory much smaller than the one I’d lived most of my life in. It was warm at least and I had a bed all to myself.

We were all new and none of us seemed to know what was happening. The other girls were from orphanages too. We all talked to about each other of what we’d experienced. We’d all been checked over by the doctors but only a few had had the test with the dirty videos and the sensors on our heads. Of those, two had blue bracelets but only one other girl had been given a red bracelet. The rest all had green one’s although we all wore the same blue pants and shirts.

The other girl with the red bracelet said her name was Jessica. We guessed that we both had those bracelets because we were gay and the other girls had the green one’s since they were straight, and those with blue ones must have been bisexual. We weren't really sure why they were sorting us at all, such things had not mattered before. That night after I was fed I fell into a fitful sleep.

…

We were woken early the next morning and a matronly woman led us to a small cafeteria perhaps a fifth of the size of the one in the orphanage. There were other young women there and a few young men, all close to our own ages. 

I recognized a girl from my orphanage and wanted to go talk to her but the matron caught my arm and sent me over to a table with the other new arrivals. There were twenty girls and six boys as well from other orphanages, who’d been housed in a different dorm during the night. We were given warm oat porridge, well sweetened with fake sugar, it was better than I’d eaten in years. 

Once fed we were ushered out and down a hall into a room that looked a bit like one of the classrooms in the orphanage, except instead of desks there were long tables. I sat with Jessica.

We didn’t have much in common as we were from different orphanages but the connection of the bracelets seemed like enough reason to stick together. She was a pretty girl, all unruly red hair and heart shaped face. She was as skinny as most orphans but a bit taller than me.

Once we all sat down, a dark haired woman in the military uniform came in and stood at the front of the room. She wore the normal military blues, although she had a lighter blue sash across the front.

“Hello. I am Sergeant Walters and I will be your instructor for the next two years of your sorry lives. Welcome to the Terra Nueva Military.”

This causes a murmur among all of us, since we knew were weren’t going to be soldiers. We were all to slight and undernourished for that.

She gave us a moment and then kept talking, “you have been recruited to be a form of support staff, the colloquial term for which is companion or  shield-maiden.”

That got a response. One of the older girls leapt to her feat, “I ain't’ gonna be a fucking whore in a military brothel!”

Sergeant Walters just smiled, “and you will not be. We do not waste resources in training the whores for the common soldier’s brothels. I can however assure you that that is where you will end up if you fail in your classes here.  shield-maidens are not comparable to common whore’s any more than elite marines are to common soldiers. A common soldier can never hope to so much as touch a shield-maiden, they are reserved solely for elite marine units. A shield-maiden serves only her own unit, for whom she has the responsibility of providing physical, emotional and psychological, help and support. Over the next two years you will all receive medical, military, tactical and psychological training.

“At the end of this time, if you pass all of your tests you will be placed with a unit of space marines. You will be for all of them team medic, counselor, lover and if need be fellow soldier. If any of you believe that you are not fit for this, I will be happy to place you immediately in one of the military brothels, which is where you are heading if you fail.”

No one protested.

The next two years were some of the easiest of my life. For the first time ever, I was properly fed. It should probably come as no surprise that Jessica and I were soon lovers. I’m not sure that we were so much drawn together as pushed. We were the only two girls with the red bracelets in the dorm and we were both scared and lonely in a new place. In spite of having our own beds, I crept into hers most nights and we took what pleasure we could together.

I found that I actually had a fairly quick mind and took well to proper classes. I learned the basic medicine that they taught us and understood the psychology as well. I could load and unload a rifle faster than anyone else in my class. The physical exercises were hard on me though.

I’d suffered more than a few respiratory illnesses during my years in the orphanage and my lungs were weak. In spite of the treatments they gave me in the medical bay my lungs still burned a little when I ran. Years of malnutrition had left me slight and even the better food of the cafeteria didn’t seem to make me any taller. I’d probably finished growing before I ever came there. Maybe I was just never meant to be very tall. 

We received very little actual combat training, most of the time being focused on how to reload and maintain and clean weapons. Still I quickly learned that I was actually a decent shot with lighter weapons. We got training in radio codes and how to decipher them.

Of everything I found the psyche training the most interesting. We were supposed to be able to analyze the metal health of our until, check for shell shock and help them.

Now it may seem strange that although, we were primary meant to be sex partners for our future units we got very little training, even lectures about this. All of the women were given a under skin form of chemical birth control that would be good for the rest of our lives unless it was removed, the same as female soldiers received. It stopped my monthly bleedings, which came as something of a relief to me as mine had always been very painful. 

There were also a few long lectures about proper use of condoms and their constant use, since soldiers couldn’t be trusted not to bring something infectious back to the unit, especially if they visited a non military brothel. I wasn’t sure how this applied to me, since I’d been told I’d be placed with a female unit but I listened anyway.

In our second year there were more lectures, all given by retired comfort maidens. Most were the bare bones basics of how to do different sex acts and how not to get hurt doing them. A few were almost more philosophical, about how to keep the different members of a unit from getting jealous of each other. Yet another lecture was how to protect yourself from physical abuse by your unit.

My favorite teacher was Ms. Jennings. She had some very strong views. I can still remember her best lecture.

“You are not your unit’s whore, they are all your lovers by your permission. It’s not your job service them without discretion. You have the right to refuse and even turn a marine away if he hurts or mistreats you. They owe you respect and consideration every bit as much as you owe them care.

“I can provide a few basic guidelines for you. Never, ever let any of the soldiers hit or physically harm you. The first time it happens tell your sergeant and if he won’t act go over his head because I can promise you that if a man think he can get away with that kind of thing he will never stop. Second, never fuck them all at once, or more than two at a time. You don’t owe that to them. 

“Third, never fuck more than three in a day, they’ll respect you more if they have to wait two weeks for their turn. Forth never show favoritism for any soldier, give all smiles and cunt equally even if you like some better than others. You don’t want to deal with jealousy. Fifth, be careful about indulging kinks, especially painful ones. If you do it for one soldier the rest might want it. If you do something special make it clear that it’s a favor and isn’t going to happen often. Don’t agree to anal any more often than every third fuck with any soldier and then only if the soldier can do it properly without hurting you. The gentler stuff though, like the ones who have a thing about your feet you can oblige them every time since it doesn’t hurt or cost you anything.”

“Finally understand that you can be either your units bitch or its queen and you know which one you want to be. Never let them think that they are entitled to anything from you, not even a bandage. You give things to them, they don’t demand them. If they’re not grateful you’re not doing your job right. You let them fuck you, they aren’t owed a fuck. Got it?”

And that was pretty much all the instruction I ever got in that matter. They were training companions not fancy courtesans. In the blink of an eye two years had passed and it was time for me to leave the academy. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

I was eighteen when they placed me with my first unit. Jessica had been placed a month before. Word of my own placement came suddenly. A soldier came and took me out of class and I barely had time to gather my few meager possessions from my locker before I was led to a transport.

I was frightened the moment I set foot in the air car. I had never been in one before, only a transport van. We didn’t go far, just across the city to another military compound. It was one where they housed the marines in before they deployed them.

The soldier who brought me barely bothered to shove me toward the unit’s sergeant before leaving me alone in the big chaotic barracks of Zeta Base. I was left there with my bag over my shoulder blinking uncertainty at the thirty soldiers who made up the Forty-Second unit of the Elite Space Marines.

Their captain, a dark haired woman with a short military cut and a battle worn face bowed to me formally. She was the age my own mother would have been, if she’d lived. An ugly red scar marred her attractive face from right to left and robbed her of her left eye, which wshe covered in a dark patch.

“I’m Captain White, please let me welcome you to your unit,  shield-maiden.”

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, no one had ever  bowed to me or called me anything other than “girl” or “hey you.”

I think I blushed crimson. This got some laughs. Somehow I managed to mumble out my name, Kate.

Captain White set about a series of quick introductions. I doubt I remember a single name I was told then. The soldiers were an almost even mix of girls close to my own age and older more battle scarred looking women. The younger seemed fascinated by me while the older ones seemed either disappointed or disinterested. I did not know what to make of that.

When the introductions were done Captain White led me away from the group, down the hall, and then to what I realized in panic was a room with a bed. She must have saw the look on my face because she stopped in the doorway and quickly reassured me.

“This is your private room Kate. You don’t have to let me in you don’t want to.”

I’d never had a room before either. 

I stayed in the doorway, “What happens if I let you in?”

She offered me a kind smile, “We’ll talk and nothing more.”

“Okay.”

We sat awkwardly on the bed, me looking at my hands and her thoughtfully studying me. This wasn’t really how I’d expected to get introduced to my unit or sergeant. I knew what the regulations were. I was supposed to spend my first night with the unit sergeant then one soldier after another each night, the order decided by lots, until I’d fucked all of them.

Sergeant White did not seem eager to shove me onto my back, or even to want to touch me.

“Gods, you really are just a kid, aren’t you. We thought they were going to send us an older  shield-maiden from a dissolved unit. ”

I blushed, “I’m of age”

Her kind face still look worried. “Barely. You’re not a virgin are you?” 

I covered my face with my hands to hide it from her, “No. Am I supposed to be?”

“No, of course not.” After a moment she added. “This is still your first unit though right?” 

I nodded. It felt hard to find words.

We sat for a moment awkwardly.

I fidgeted, “are we um, supposed to tumble now or something?”

She smiled, “Don’t take it as an insult, but no. I’m married and my wife isn’t one for sharing. By military regulations we’ll share a bed once a week but you can use it as a chance to get some sleep. ”

As much as I liked the look of her I was deeply relieved to hear this. She was being nice to me without the hope of anything in reward. I almost didn’t quite believe her. “So then tomorrow night I take the soldier that draws the best lot.”

She shook her head, “According the military regulations yes but that’s not the tradition in the Forty-Second unit.”

I looked up at her, “It’s not?”

“No. In the Forty-Second when a new  shield-maiden comes in no one touches her for the first three days. Then the unit will choose who you have for that first night and every night after that until you’ve done everyone. Then you can set up a schedule however you want to. The last  shield-maiden scheduled one woman each night and would sometimes do a second out of schedule if she thought she needed it.” 

A sudden thought struck me, “What happened to the last  shield-maiden?”

To her credit Sergeant White actually looked slightly embarrassed, “I married her.”

“You what?” that I didn’t believe her.

I swear she blushed, “Mary and I came up from basic training together and after the battle of Broken Shield, when we lost half the unit, we realized how much we meant to each other. She left the service and we got hitched. My family disowned me for it, not that I care. We’re expecting a baby girl in the spring.”

I hadn’t realized that  shield-maidens could leave the service or get married.

“The military let you do that?”

“After Broken Shield they would have given us anything we wanted. Anyway, you can leave the service you know. Not yet, since you’re indentured for two years after the costs of the academy but after that you’re not bound to stay unless you want to. It’s not unheard of for  shield-maidens to leave and sometimes to marry one of the soldiers they served with. Truth is that it is sort of a point of pride for a unit that when a shield-maiden retires someone from the unit marries her.

I hadn’t known that. I wasn’t sure where I’d go if I left the military but just the realization that I could meant something.

She misinterpreted the way I was looking at her, “Don’t get your hopes up with me though kid. I can’t afford a second wife, especially with a baby on the way.”

“That’s okay.”

“The unit will treat you properly though, they always did right by Mary. I don’t know the new girls as well, the ones who replaced those who were killed but I think they’re a decent enough lot. If anyone ever treats you wrong or hurts you come tell me and I’ll put a stop to it.”

“Okay.”

…

Over the next week I slowly got to know my new unit. I quickly got the feeling that I had not been what the older soldiers were hoping for. They had liked, even loved their last  shield-maiden and they weren’t happy to see a battle tested woman replaced with a green girl.

They might think I was cute enough but they doubted my ability to perform a  shield-maidens other duties, such as patch up a wounds or hold the unit together under stress. They held most of the new recruits in equal doubt, so I didn’t take it personally.

The younger soldiers didn’t seem to fully know what to make of me, as if unable to decide if I should be treated as a madonna or a whore. Some were shy and some obscenely foreword. 

I found myself very baffled and lonely during those first days. The unit was finishing a stretch of training before being shipped out again. Normally a  shield-maiden was placed with a new unit base side for at least a month before deployment but for some reason I was being added late, which meant I had very little time to adjust to my unit before we went into combat.

Being a stranger, there wasn’t much for me to do that first week. The veteran soldiers made preparations and repaired gear while Sergeant White dedicated her time to training the new recruits.

On my first day, I went to the supply bay to check that the unit had all the proper medical supplies. As soon as I had finished checking through the boxes and making sure they matched the list one of the veteran soldiers came over and briskly took the list from my hand and began sorting through the boxes. She was a scarred woman with a few early streaks of grey in her dark hair and I vaguely recalled that her name was Mel.

“Hey I just did that.”

“You’ll forgive me if I want to double check your work kid. 

I bristled at that and crossed my arms, “I am trained in handling a medical inventory.”

She paused from the crate she was sorting through, “Really then you should have realized that we don’t have near enough compression bandages or morphine.”

I picked up the list from the top of another crate. “We’ve got everything on the manifest.”

She snatched the sheet and made notes, “trust me, it’s not enough. We’ll need three times as much if we see combat. They always give us too little unless we ask for more. Go to the supply depot and request two more crates of bandages, one of morphine and a half supply of antibiotics.” 

I almost asked who exactly she was to be ordering me around, since enlisted soldiers didn’t have the authority to give me direct orders, but I wisely bit my lip. She knew what she was doing, I didn’t.

I took the list, “Alright. Is there anything else I should do?”

Her face softened slightly, “See if you can get some more vitamin packs while you’re there too. I’ll send one of the new bloods with you to help you carry everything.”

She waved over a young soldier from the other side of the supply bay who was trying to move a crate that was probably too big for to handle on her own. 

“Hey blondie come and be useful. Our lady needs stuff hauled from the supply depot.”

The blond soldier gave up on the crate and hurried over. She moved with the lanky eagerness of a puppy. She was close to my own age and clearly as new to the unit as me. She was nearly a head taller than me and not done growing. She would probably put on more muscle if she lived long enough.

She offered me an eager smile.

“You need help?”

“Yes.”

We set off towards the supply depot through the winding concrete halls of the base, walking side by side. She was trying very hard not to stare at me and not doing a very good job of it. I wasn’t sure what she was even looking at, beyond my companions stripes I wasn’t dressed any different than anyone else. 

“You’ll have to forgive me but I don’t remember your name,” I admitted.

She shrugged easily, “Ashley O'Connor, you can call me Ash, everyone else does.”

“Okay Ash, then you can call me Kate.”

“Great!”

Damn, she had a cute smile. Her hair was just a little bit longer than a proper military cut and it fell in her eyes constantly.

We reached the huge voluminous supply depot warehouse and made our way through a mad house of boxes, moving machines and yelling men and women towards the office.

We waited our turn in a long line until we came to the desk of a harried looking clerk. He was a skinny man with a nose like a beak.

“What do you want?” he snapped.

I gave him my list.

“You don’t need all that.”

“The veterans in my unit say we do.”

The man snorted and looked me up and down, taking in first the blue stripe on my fatigues and then the rest of me. “Damn you comfort whores are insistent. You think you’re entitled to anything for the asking.”

I blushed and wanted to run away. The only thing that kept me standing there was that I’d rather face his scorn than admit to Mel that I’d failed to do the first thing anyone in my unit had asked of me. At my back I could feel Ash tensing. This could go bad quickly.

I straightened my back, “My unit needs it and regulations say I can ask for any additional medical supplies I deem necessary.”

He considered me and then apparently decided that arguing wasn’t worth the trouble. He stamped my sheet of paper. “Fine, just don’t ask any of my men to carry it for you princess.”

I snatched the list and beat a hasty exit from the office. Ash followed me seething. “That jerk.” She grumbled the moment we were out.

“Its fine.”

“He called you a whore!”

I was getting the feeling that if I became angry every time someone called me that, I’d spend the rest of my life furious. 

“It doesn’t matter. Now come on let’s find these things.”

That proved a fairly involved task. We couldn’t just find and take the crates. We had to find an assistant quartermaster who got a heavy loading cart and led us around the warehouse to where the different boxes were kept.

He at least was a polite, if disinterested young man. He helped us load the crates, stamped our paper again and told us to bring back the cart when we were done. The cart was heavy and once he left us at the door Ash was having a hard time trying to put it down the hall on her own.

I moved beside her and added my hands.

“You don’t have to,” she protested.

“Why not?”

“You’re a  shield-maiden, no one expects you to do physical labor, that’s what the rest of the unit is for.”

I laughed, “I’m not helpless. I’ll do my share when I can and get out of the way when I can’t.”

That seemed to confuse her but she accepted it. We got back to our own supply storage and Ash and Mel unloaded the boxes. Mel seemed kind of impressed that I’d gotten everything.

We took the cart back and went in search of dinner. The cafeteria was a booming chaos of about twenty units all trying to get grub around the same time. Ash and I finally got through the line and found an empty table, that stayed that way for about thirty-seconds.

Our unit’s entire younger half descended on us all at once. A solidly built red haired young woman half yanked Ash out of her seat, ruffling her hair playfully.

“Now what is this Ash? Don’t tell me you’re trying to win our new companion all to yourself.”

“I wasn’t, Alex,” she protested 

Alex elbowed her roughly, “Yea sure,” and thumped down between us.

“Well, she’s certainly been the only one of you lot to welcome me or show me around.” I told her. “If she’s trying to charm me she’s doing better than the rest of you.”

This got a laugh and a couple of catcalls. A pretty slender brunette girl who wore her hair long in a braid slid in beside me, “You must forgive us, we have clearly been neglecting you.”

I caught her hand when she tried to slip it around my waist and go lower. 

“Not so fast. I like to know a woman’s first name before I let her grope me anywhere.” This got more laughter. 

“Sarah,” she offered with a lecherous smile, “and I can promise you’ll soon be calling it out under very happy circumstances.”

“Let’s hope your tongue is as good with other things as it is with words.” 

I couldn’t believe how bold I was being but these women brought it out in me. To be honestly I was mostly quoting some of my favorite heroines from penny dreadful novels. My audience seemed to be enjoying themselves. I wasn’t intimidated by them like I was by the older members of the unit. 

“Oh she is trust me,” promised a slender blond not much taller than me. She had her hair caught back in a ponytail and a very pretty face. She leaned across the table to offer me her hand, “Names Millie by the way.”

“Pleased to meet you. Now who are the rest of you?” 

They quickly gave out their names. A burly dark haired woman was named Sam and another short haired brunette with fever scars was Hallie. I realized to my shock that I knew the last one. Her scars from a bad bout of blue fever were hard to forget, they marred most of her face with pale lines even a decade after her illness.

“You were in the Second Street Orphanage with me. They took you six years ago.”

She blinked at me, “I was there but I don’t remember you.”

“We didn’t really know each other and I was just a kid. I remember you though; you were one of the better older girls. You kept the meaner ones from picking on me.”

She blushed, “I did what I could.”

“I’m grateful.”

We all fell into talking and eating and I soon felt at ease among them. They weren’t so different from the girls I’d known in the orphanage or the academy, in fact all but a few were from the orphanages too.

All but Hallie were in their first unit. She’d briefly seen service in another unit to replace a sniper who was away on medical leave but now she was being permanently placed with this one.

All of them except Ash and Hallie were pretty much shamelessly flirting with me, Ash because she was so shy and Hallie for some reason I wasn't sure of. I periodically had to redirect Millie’s hands and Alex’s too. 

We finished eating and all headed out into one of the bases courtyards where we could relax until lights out. There were about two units worth of young men hanging about as well. They mostly ignored us after a few brief greetings. They were busy smoking and watching several of the sparring matches going on.

Ash and Hallie set to sparring with a form of hand to hand combat on a cleared bit of grass. I sat down with the rest of the unit to watch on the grass.

“So who are you hoping to bed first?” asked Alex nudging me playfully.

“I thought you guys chose.”

There was a quick flurry of glances, “We don’t really. It is up to the veterans since they’ve got seniority but if you were to say you wanted one of us first, I bet they’d choose that one.”

I leaned back against my arms in the grass and considered her carefully, “You’re all so charming I couldn’t choose. Besides I don’t want to cause jealousy.” That was one of the things they’d really hammered into me at academy.

“Well said,” laughed Millie. “But if it’s your first time, don’t you want someone young.”

“Won’t be my first time.”

To my surprise Alex leaned over and smacked Millie on the shoulder, “I told you she weren’t no virgin. I told you they teach them all kinds of kinky stuff about sex in their part of the academy.”

I swear I blushed crimson, “They do not. We don’t get any special training in that.”

“Oh, well that’s a shame,” sighed Sarah. “I was kind of hoping you might know some fun stuff.”

Millie shoved her, “And I don’t?”

“Sure you do.” Sarah yanked her into a kiss. Millie kissed her back and then tried to roll her under her from where they were sitting on the ground. I had to scramble out of the way in order not to get bumped into. 

Sarah didn’t take well to the rolling and shoved Millie off. She tumbled away laughing. A series of catcalls and a few lewd suggestions emanated from some of the young men who’d been distracted from the actual sparring matches.

Sarah stood up, bowed to the cheers and then sat down. Our audience lost interest. 

“Who normally wins your little matches?” I asked the pair.

“I do!” they both said simultaneously. 

I rolled my eyes and settled back into the grass, “what do you mean by fun stuff? Like the things couples do in the penny dreadful?”

“More like the ones with brown paper covers,” said Alex.

“I’m not sure I know about those.”

She winked at me, “I’ll teach you.”

I don’t know what she might have said next because a bell rang and we headed back to our barracks. I slept that night alone in my tiny closet of a room.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From here on out there will pretty much be a sex scene or two in each chapter

I woke early on the third day with something of a sense of foreboding. I knew I won’t sleep alone that night. I spent most of the morning with an electronic tablet in my lap as I sat in a corner and began to read through the unit’s files. I had access to everything from their personnel files to their psychological evaluations. 

It felt a little invasive reading it all but they were my responsibility now and I couldn’t shrug my duty. Along with everything else, I had mission reports and I began to read about the disastrous battle of Broken Shield.

I knew little to nothing about how the war was going, aside from a vague sense that we were winning. Watching the news hadn’t exactly been encouraged at the academy. Even I had heard about Broken Shield though, we’d lost the third moon of Kepler in a series of bloody days, a battle christened Broken Shield for the name of the lunar crater where most of it occurred.

The Forty-Second had lost half their number in a disastrous retreat. Of the survivors nearly all had suffered serious injuries and all had been treated for PTSD. None had been discharged, although some probably should have been. None had left except for the  shield-maiden, Mary Allen.

That went a long way to explain how gruff and scarred the veteran half of the unit were. The younger one’s reports weren’t half so interesting. I learned from Alex’s psyche evaluation that she’d been molested while in the orphanage and been treated for the early signs of syphilis when she’d entered the military academy. I saw that Hallie had suffered a shoulder wound while serving with her first unit. Millie and Sarah had nothing interesting in their psych info. Sam apparently had minor autism, but not enough to disbar her from the military and Ash had social anxiety.

The one non depressing  thing I noticed was that while most of the women had tested out as homosexual a few had been listened as potentially bisexual including Sergeant White and Sarah. I still had no idea why the segregated the units according the orientation in the first place so I didn’t think too much about it.

If I really thought about it, an entirely lesbian unit shouldn’t necessarily need a  shield-maiden in the first place. I mean presumably they could bed each other couldn’t they? Clearly Sarah and Millie were. The unit might ultimately be better off with a proper medic or counselor than me, the veteran members certainly seemed to think so.

Thinking about them, I realized I hadn’t been doing a very good job of getting to know any of them. I stowed my tablet and went to see if I could make myself useful. There wasn’t much to do though, nearly all the gear had been sorted and inventoried. We were shipping out in three days. When I left my room and poked my head into the main barracks no one paid me much mind. Nearly all the veteran soldiers were using this as a chance to nap, cleaning gear and writing letters home. No one was getting leave this close to shipping out. 

I went to the practice field out behind the barracks where Sergeant White was busy drilling the new recruits out at the firing range, along with a lot of other sergeants and their units. I watched for a few minutes as she barked at them, guiding them quickly through the assembling and disassembling of riffles.

Then I chose a rifle from the box at the edge of the firing range and took up a place at the very edge of the group. If nothing else my short stint in the academy had taught me how to assemble a gun. I did so quickly.

Sergeant White gave me a polite nod and went back to barking and berating the work of my comrades. Once we’d assembled and broken apart our weapons about a hundred times she finally let us practice shooting at targets. 

I kept missing my target and the recoil of the high powered rifle nearly threw me off my feet. I jumped when I felt the sergeant’s hand on my shoulder.

“You’re not bracing right. Who the hell taught you to shoot?” she half yelled in my ear to be heard over the barrage.

“One of my teachers in the academy. We didn’t spend much time on it.”

“Spread your legs and brace yourself. Right side forward.” I jumped again when she reached around me adjusting my hands on the gun and kicked my legs wider. Her arms were strong and as solid as stone as she corrected me.

“Alright, now raise the sights and fire.” I did and to my surprise actually hit my paper target at the other end of the field.”

“Good girl,” I could feel her breath on my ear as she pulled away and went to yell less kindly at someone else.

I was more flushed than I could remember being in a long time but I shook it off, reloaded and went back to shooting and hitting my target as often as not. We switched to laser rifles after about a half hour. They work better in low gravity but take an almost excessive amount of energy. Most units never carry more than a few since the power packs are so damn heavy. The modern militaries still mostly depend on projectile weapons.

Without the kick, I was actually a decent shot, although I could barely hold up the painfully heavy energy weapon. I was relieved when Sergeant White called for us to move on to the sparring ring.

We waited around a large dirt circle of cleared of grass as another unit finished up. A heavyset sergeant was  bellowing at two young men as they more or less tried to kill each other. Their fight ended with one roughly shoving the other into the dirt.

They left the ring and Sergeant White went into it with Hallie, who she seemed to be using as a teacher's aid. 

“We’re going to practice slipping a grab and throwing an opponent one more time. Let’s see if you can finally get this right ladies.”

I watched patiently as she demonstrated the required moves with Hallie. I did noticed that White did all the grasp slipping and throwing, but then again Hallie was younger and very good at rolling with a throw.

When they were done with their demonstration everyone teamed up to practice and I found myself the odd woman out. Hallie and the sergeant came over to me.

“You can practice with me,” Hallie said kindly.

“Okay.”

She moved behind me and closed her hands over my wrist. I pushed my arm back and twisted my wrist the way the sergeant had showed me, then I tried to grab Hallie’s wrist and flip her. Nothing happened.

I tried again and she didn’t budge. It felt like I was trying to move stone. 

“What am I doing wrong?” I asked softly.

“Twist and pull harder, shift your center of gravity towards me.”

It still didn’t happen even as I heard the yelps and thumps of my comrades all around me.

I pressed back against her and tried to throw her forward. Again nothing happened.

Wearily I slumped against her, “You’re too heavy. I’m too small.”

Very sweetly she leaned over and kissed the back of my neck. “No I’m not and no you’re not. It’s just that no one’s taught you what to do. I’ll teach you, you can do this.”

I leaned against her, “Tell me what to do.”

Slowly, step by step, she walked me through each motion, covering and showing me with her own hands. I learned gradually how to free myself from a seemingly steel wrist grab and then how to throw her off balance. Just before lunch I managed my first back step and throw. I know she was leaning into it and rolling forward, but all the same she went over my shoulder and onto the ground gracefully.

I felt oddly proud of myself and deeply grateful as she rolled easily onto her feet. 

“You’re getting it!” she praised.

The bell rang and we all went to the cafeteria. At lunch I sat with my unit and they all ribbed Hallie for the time she’d spent with me.

“Well I thought Ash was trying to charm you but now I know Hallie is up to something,” laughed Alex.

“I ain’t up to anything I was just showing her how to do a decent throw, shame on her academy instructors for not teaching her.”

“Well she’s a  shield-maiden she doesn’t need to know how to fight does she?” asked Millie.

I cast her an ugly looked, “what do you mean I don’t? I’ll be in the trenches with you won’t I. What the hell am I supposed to do if I find myself facing an enemy without any of you sorry lot around to protect me? Do I just bare my breast to be shot or my body to be to be raped?”

That got me silence. To my surprise Sergeant White set down her sandwich and gave me a sad look.

“You don’t have to be afraid Kate, we’ll protect you just like we did Mary. You won’t be alone or undefended unless we’re all cold and bleeding on the ground. Every unit owes that to its shield-maiden. But if we fail you, if we fall, you do need to be able to fight for yourself. Every woman deserves to go down fighting rather than cowering.”

As far as I knew I was supposed to eat a suicide capsule before I allowed myself to be captured. No one had ever said I should fight first. I had one of the poison capsules on the lanyard around my neck with my ID card. White gave the entire unit a careful look over before adding, “I’ll make sure you get the training you didn’t get in the academy Kate.”

For that I was more grateful than I had words to express. I was so choked up I just nodded and that seemed to be enough. 

The afternoon was more drilling and I focused as hard as I could. When we finished I grabbed a quick shower before dinner and ate with the younger members of my unit. They were clearly excited. They knew what was coming that night. There was a certain degree of bitterness.

“Mark my word, if Sarge doesn’t invoke her rights Mel will. One of them is going to claim you. Damn the right of seniority,” grumbled Alex over her meatloaf.

I was too nervous to eat but I tried to feign disinterest, “What does it matter, I’ll be with all of you soon enough,”

“Yea but first matters doesn’t it,” protested Millie.

I had no idea what to say. I just wished my heart would stop trying to burst out of my chest. I wasn’t so worried about who my first bed mate in the unit would be so much as worried I’d disappoint her.

Once we had eaten, Sarge told me to get out from under foot for a little bit so that the unit could “talk.” I went to my room and waited. About a half hour later Sarge knocked on my door and told me to come out.

Mel spoke for everyone. The old soldier seemed damn amused. “We took a vote and decided that since you’re so young your first lover in this unit should be as well. The new girls tell me that Ash is a virgin, so we all thought she’d be the best to see to you first. You say you’re not, so maybe you can teach her a thing or two, instead of the other way around.”

If I was embarrassed, poor Ash half died. The younger soldiers shoved her forward and the older ones just laughed. We found ourselves standing face to face at the threshold of my room. Someone pushed her and we half fell into the tiny room as the door slammed shut behind her. I found myself on my back with the young woman on top of me.

“Sorry,” she said as she tried to scramble off of me.

“Don’t apologize,” I managed as I caught my breath. 

I stood up and went to sit on the edge of the bed. After a moment she came to join me. Her hands folded awkwardly in her lap.

Tentatively I asked, “have you really never had sex before?”

Even in the dim light I could see her face color, “Yes, there wasn’t a girl in my unit in the academy who wanted me and once I got here it was kind of awkward. All the veterans think I’m a damn kid, Sarah and Millie are already fucking, Hallie doesn’t want anyone, Alex is too vulgar and I’ve never figured Sam out.

Very gently I leaned over and kissed her softly. When we parted, I told her, “Well if you want me I want you.”

“For real?” she asked softly.

“Yes,” and it was the truth. If nothing else it had been over a month since I’d seen Jessica and I hadn’t slept alone for so long before.

Then we kissed again. I had to guide her hands in a way I never had for my first two lovers, who had seemed to know what was needed almost instinctively. With softly whispered words I told Ash what to do with her strong fingers and then her lips and tongue. She took to pleasuring me, as if she’d been born to it, which I suppose she had.

Once I’d found release I traced my own fingers over her naked body and pushed her onto her back on the small bed. Her nipples were responsive when I sucked them and her cunt warm when I pressed my fingers into it. Her clit was a familiar bundle of nerves beneath my eager fingers. She arched under my ministrations almost embarrassingly quickly, so we of course had to do it again and then another time for good measure.

We fell asleep a few hours before dawn, tangled up in each other’s limbs. She was only my third lover and I utterly adored her from her embarrassed smile to her kind blue eyes.

No one woke us up the next morning and we almost missed breakfast. When the harsh light of morning found our room we darted into the showers, yanked on clothes and met our friends in the dining hall. Alex had had the good sense to save us some food.

I tore into the bread and cheese she gave me. Ash ate in a slightly more ladylike manner. The whole younger half of the unit was clearly waiting for a story but we didn’t give them one. I just kissed Ash on the cheek and followed her out onto the rifle range.

My shooting was improving if nothing else. Sergeant White helped me out again and I did better that afternoon during the sparring as well. I actually managed to throw Hallie again, much to the amusement of the entire unit.

I desperately wanted to be close to Ash and we trained together for most of the day. We were still aglow with all those happy hormones that come with orgasms. I could remember that it had been like that with my first two lovers the first time we’d tumbled. We had a hard time keeping our hand off each other.

I was probably being a little too obvious about it though because Sergeant White took me aside after lunch and told me, “Kate, you’re the  shield-maiden and if you weren’t new it wouldn’t be my place to tell you this but you are so I will. Nothing good will come of you getting too cozy with Ash. It will just make it harder for her to accept that she’s got to share you and you can’t go having favorites right out of the gate.”

I knew she was right but it still rankled me. I bit my tongue and didn’t say what I wanted to. She was only trying to help and I wasn’t going to get far talking back to my commanding officer.

In the evening after dinner we had a little down time and all went to the practice field to spar more. A few of the Veteran soldiers came along to watch and heckle or to practice some themselves. I still didn’t really know any of them other than Mel.

I set about practicing getting out of wrist locks with Hallie. I was getting better at it and the activity left us flushed. It wasn’t that she said anything or even touched me any more than she needed to but I was intently aware of her body pressed against mine.

I was so focused I didn’t hear what Alex was saying to the rest of the group until she called over, “Well Kate, what do you think? I was saying we should have a little tournament and the winner gets your favors for the night.”

I felt Hallie tense behind me.

“She’s not a prize to be fought over,” 

I covered her hand with my own, “Its fine. I think it might be fun.” I knew the unit was tense and needed to blow off some steam.

She pulled away, “If you’re okay with it.”

We all went to one of the center sparring rings in the big courtyard and soldiers began to gather to watch once they heard what was happening. Mostly they were the young men from the units we’d shared the courtyard with the day before.

I saw a couple other young women though from the only other all female unit on base. I noticed that there was a young man with them who wore blue stripes on his uniform just like me. He had been in the class ahead of mine in the academy, one of the few male companions in training.

The veteran members of the unit settled in to watch but all declined to fight, something about it not really being fair for the new recruits if they did. Mel served as judge though. The fights went until either one opponent was thrown, pinned or yielded. The throwing rule made things go a lot faster and get less violent.

Millie and Alex went first and not surprisingly Alex won. Then Sarah and Hallie fought and Hallie won. Ash went ahead and fought to, not that she’d get me if she won but because she didn’t want to be left out. Sam beat her pretty much hands down though. The dark haired soldier was probably the strongest in the group. She was one of the only one of us who wasn’t from the city. She’d grown up on an orphanage farm in the countryside.

She caught Ash’s first punch, pinned her arm behind her back and had her on the ground in under ten-seconds flat.

That left three women advancing, which was an odd number. Alex fought Sam, Hali fought Alex and then Sam fought Hallie. Sam beat Alex, Hali beat Alex and then Sam beat Hallie. With two victories Sam won. 

Sam was winded and breathless as she offered a frustrated Hallie a hand up from the dirt. Hallie took the hand but wouldn’t look at her friend. She had clearly really wanted to win.

Alex patted her on the shoulder, happy in spite of her double defeat. “Hey don’t look so sad. I say we use the order of the final round of the tournament to decide what order we set up the night after this one. If we do that you’ll have tomorrow night with her.”

Hallie straightened up a bit, “If the other’s agree.”

No one had any objections. I wondered if I should be insulted that the veteran soldiers were pretty much letting the younger ones go first uncontested. I was starting to wonder if any of them were actually interested in me at all.

Not that it mattered for the next couple of days. I was pretty sure I had my hands, or at least my bed full. Someone pushed me forward towards Sam. She smiled uncertainty,

“Hey,”

“Hey yourself,” I said back, feeling kind of shy.

We just stood there for a moment looking at each other. Our audience started to call out a few choice suggestions. Sam opted for one of the more mild ones and pulled me into a kiss. She had to tilt her head down to do it but she was a surprisingly good kisser.

She took me completely by surprise when she slid a hand under my knees and picked me up. I grabbed at her neck for support and she carried me from the courtyard to enthusiastic applause.

It was probably a good thing that I’d forgotten to close my bedroom door earlier because it would have been a lot less dramatic if she’d had to put me down to open it. She set me down on the bed gently and went back to close the door.

She sat down on the edge of the bed, just as Ash had the day before. Her confidence seemed to be waning now that the thrill of the fights and the crowd was fading.

I leaned over and took her hand, “Have you done this before?”

She offered me an almost wolfish smile, “What do you think?” 

I wanted to run my hands through the short dark waves of her hair and I did. “Handsome woman like you? I imagine you’ve had a lover or two.”

“To be honest just one, another girl in the academy. She got placed in a different unit and I haven’t seen her since this spring.”

“Do you miss her?”

She leaned into the caress of my fingers, “Yes, but that’s the way of things. I’d rather focus on the present.”

“Hm,” I trailed my other hand down her neck to start unbuttoning her shirt, “I think we can manage that.”

She pulled me more fully onto her lap so that I was straddling her waist as she leaned against the wall on the small bed.

She ran her hands almost tentatively over me as I leaned in to kiss her. Her mouth was warm and she knew exactly what to do with her tongue. Her hands got a little more explorative.

We pulled apart just long enough for me to get my shirt and pants off. When I tugged at her shirt she covered my hands, “Why don’t you let me see to you first?”

I wasn’t going to object. I straddled her lap again and this time she dipped her head down to pay proper attention to my breasts. When she pressed a hand between my legs she found me wet and ready.

She rubbed a few quick circles around my clit before slipping one and then two fingers into me.

“You’re tight,” she whispered in my ear. 

I was kind of past the point of coherent speech by that point. So I just nodded, not that she saw it, busy as she now was kissing my neck.

She began to move and curve her fingers inside of me and she found just the right place to make me see stars. Her thumb on my clit was enough to drive me over the edge quick enough.

I collapsed onto her panting for breath. She pulled me into her arms and I rested my forehead against her shoulder.

She felt good and warm and I could feel her heartbeat under the palm of my hand. Once I caught my breath I sat back a little and considered her far too pleased expression in the feint light of the lamp.

“Now, what exactly can I do for you?” I asked. I was kind of hoping to get her shirt off.

“You could go down on me. I mean if you want to.” Odd how she could seem so damn confident one moment and then waver the next. I could tell how much she wanted me but she seemed constantly afraid to ask me to do anything.

I kissed her lightly on the lips, “I’d love to. Lie back.”

“Is it okay if I sit on the edge of the bed instead?”

“Sure.”

As soon as I’d agreed and she moved away from me I realized that this was going to be a little awkward, at least for me. I would have to kneel on the floor between her legs for this to work. I wasn’t sure I completely liked what was implied in that. Usually when that position happened in Penny Dreadfuls one woman was dominating the other, or the villianess had the heroine on her knees.

If Sam wanted it though, I could do it. I took a pillow from the bed and set it beneath my knees so that I could kneel on the floor in front of her. I undid the buckle on her pants and then she helped me push them down her hips but not completely off. She parted her legs for me and I ducked my head down.

At least this was something familiar. She ran her hands carefully through my hair as I worked her clit with my tongue. She barely made a sound but I could feel her lips jerking every so often under my hands and her breath was quickening. 

When I lifted a hand to press between her legs she gently caught my wrist in her hand. 

“Just your mouth.”

I complied. She tugged on my hair a little roughly when she came but I didn’t mind. When she had her breath she guided me back to my feet and kissed me with her essence still on my lips.

Before I quite realized what was happening she was rolling me beneath her on the bed, never breaking the kiss.

She was more thorough the second time her hands and lips exploring every inch of me. When I thought I couldn’t bear it another instant and that the burning need would consume me, she kissed her way up my thigh and spread my lips with her deft fingers. She lowered her mouth to my clit.  When I arched against her, she pressed her fingers back into my aching body. I swear I saw stars when I came.

By the time I was aware of anything but the thrum of blood in my veins she had stretched out beside me. I curled against her, resting my head on her shoulder as she lazily stroked my back. At some point I drifted off. 


	4. Chapter 4

I woke the next morning exactly where I’d fallen asleep my head still pooled on her shoulder. She smiled at me and kissed my forehead. Beyond the door I could hear Sergeant White barking at the unit to get up and get moving.

Sam slipped from the covers, tugging her clothes into place as she went, “I’d better go.”

I got the feeling that being allowed to sleep late with Ash was kind of a one-time thing. I wasn’t actually sure if I was expected to always get up with the unit but if I was going to have so many late nights, surely I wasn’t.

I stretched out languidly once Sam had left. I really needed a shower. I tugged a towel around myself and ducked out of my room heading for units bathroom. From what I’d heard the male units all shared one per unit block, but we just shared ours with the other female unit who’s dorms was next to us.

A series of catcalls followed me on my short walk but I wasn’t bothered. About half the unit was already showering and a few more catcalls greeted me when I stepped into the steamy room.

Unlike in the orphanage and academy, where there had just been showerheads on the wall. this bathroom actually had stalls with curtains, not that that stopped most of the unit from drying off or changing in the middle of the room.

I went into a stall and turned on the blessedly warm water. The water heater in the academies bathrooms had been broken for my last three months there. I hit the wall dispenser to get some shampoo and started to scrub my hair.

I had just closed my eyes to step back under the spray when I felt a hand slip around my waist. I nearly jumped out of my skin. I whirled around, blinking soap out of my eyes and found myself looking up into Alex’s mischievous grin. She was also every bit as naked as I was.

She pressed me back against the wall, covering my mouth with her own. I knew I should have pushed her away but I couldn’t think of anywhere I wanted her more than where she was. Her hands found my breasts, tweaking my nipples and it felt intense.

I turned my face away from the kiss long enough to gasp, “we shouldn’t. It’s not your turn.”

She leaned closer, nudging my legs open with her knees, “Then tell me to stop.”

I really, really didn’t want to do that, not when I was discovering what the pressure of her knee could do against my core. She just looked too damn good with her red hair wet and disarrayed and her full breasts and slender frame beaded with water.

“Stay.”

She brought her lips to the damp curve of my neck and it felt like fire. I slumped against the wall, clinging to her. She replaced her knee with her fingers slipping them into my slick cunt and her thumb to my clit. Then she added another finger to a completely different place and began to rock her hand. I had to bite my own wrist to keep from crying out when I came, it was the fastest I ever had.

Then someone yanked back the shower curtain hard.

“Let her go!” Hallie snarled at Alex, grabbing her arm and roughly yanking her away from me. “Did you force her!”

Alex stumbled a step but quickly regained her balance, turning to face Hallie with a smirk, “No, she wanted me.” 

“Kate?” Hallie looked at me desperately. I hung my head. The entire room was watching us now and I wanted to curl up and die. No matter what happened I wasn’t coming out of this looking very good but I sure as hell wasn’t going to accuse Alex of something I’d consented to.

“I did.”

Hallie sighed and crossed her arms over her towel-clad body, turning her anger back towards Alex. “You’re still a fucking cheat. You said you wanted to go with the order from the tournament and then you snuck into her shower. You couldn’t wait one day!”

Alex shrugged and I couldn’t help but notice the way the movement jostled her naked breasts. She took a slow seductive step towards Hallie, “You know I’m not very good at resisting temptation.”

“No, you never are,” snapped Hallie and turned to walk away.

I remembered my own nakedness, snatched my towel off the curtain rod, and fled the bathroom. Not a single sound followed me. I wanted to hide in my room but I knew that would be childish. This was not how I’d hoped to start out with my unit. I’d screwed things up in my first week just for the sake of a quick standing fuck in a shower.

When no one came looking for me after a few minutes I forced myself to get dressed and went out to meet the unit. They’d all gone to the cafeteria for breakfast. Sergeant White was waiting for me sitting on her own neatly made bunk.

“Sit,” she ordered pointing to the bunk across from her.

I did with my eyes down cast. I’d learned early in life that it was always dangerous to meet the eyes of an authority figure, especially one who was going to punish me. I might be a soldier now but some things you don’t forget. 

I wondered what she’d do. They’d always used a rod in the orphanage but only struck our hands in the academy. What did they do to grown soldiers?

“You can look at me. I’m not mad at you,” she said softly. “I just want to know what happened.”

I looked up and saw that her grey eye was softened with worry. 

I blushed with shame. “I had sex with Alex in the shower and Hallie caught us.”

She nodded, “Okay. That’s what everyone said. Alex didn’t force you did she?”

I shook my head, “No. She surprised me but I didn’t stop her.” Very softly I added, “I wanted her and told her to stay.”

Sergeant White let out a breath and her shoulders eased slightly. “She still shouldn’t have acted as she did but it’s not the end of the world. According to unit tradition, for touching you before her turn, during your first month, she’ll have to sit out this round and the next.”

“and me?” I couldn’t help but look down at my hands again.

“You’ll have to deal with Hallie being jealous and mad at Alex. You’ve lost a little bit of face with the unit but you’ll get it back.”

“You’re not going to punish me?” The words sounded childish even to my own ears.

“No. Of course not,” her hand brushed the side of my face and tilt my chin up. “You’re the unit’s  shield-maiden. My authority as a sergeant stops when it comes to whom you bed and when. That’s between you and the unit. You have to set up and establish what works.” 

I turned my face away and felt the warmth of her hand leave my skin, “I’m not sure I understand.”

She signed and leaned back onto her bunk, “Listen, I know that they teach you all kinds of rules and regulations in the academy but the truth is that none of that matters once we’re out in the field. It’s your job to hold the unit together in heart and soul. Some companions keep a schedule, some don’t. The only thing that matters is that you choose who you bed when. The one a night approach is just a way you to get to know the whole unit slowly before you establish your own system.”

“What did the last  shield-maiden do?”

She blinked, “Mary? She didn’t really keep a calendar, she just made sure to get to everyone at least twice a month. The rest of the time though…well she’d bed who she thought needed it. She’d usually tumble more than a couple of women a day, or even a couple at a time.”

I almost coughed to death trying to clear my throat. “And that…that worked?”

She nodded, “Yes, but we were a really close unit. It probably helped that a lot of the women were already lovers to each other. We’d all come up through basic together and Mary with us.”

“Uh…” I was still trying to learn how to bed women one at a time. 

“Easy, kid, breath. No one expects that of you, now or ever if you don’t want to. This isn’t that same unit anymore, not now that it is half made of new recruits.

I took a slow breath and crossed my feet under me on the bunk and my arms around me. “I get the feeling that the older half of the unit doesn’t like me at all.”

“Well, more like they’re being standoffish. Don’t take it personally; they’ve been acting the same to most of the new recruits. We’re all still grieving what we lost and some are coping better than others.”

“I’ve read the files.”

“Then you know to tread carefully.”

“I’ll try.”

…

We got the cafeteria just in time for me to grab a bread roll and then head out to the shooting range where the unit was already drilling. I took up my rifle without a word and set about doing the best I could to kill a paper target. 

By lunch everyone seemed to have relaxed somewhat. Hallie still sat on one end of the table and Alex on the other. I wisely sat in the middle between Sarah and Millie, who were as friendly as they’d ever been and wise enough not to bring up what happened that morning.

Sam didn’t seem at all troubled, although Ash was looking at me a little funny. Not so much like she was disappointed but simply confused. I made a mental note to try and find a chance to talk to her.

We spent most of the afternoon in sparring practice out in the yard. To my surprise Hallie came over quietly to partner with me when we separated into pairs.

“Hey,” she said softly, “Listen, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you this morning. I shouldn’t have yelled like that, even if I was mad at Alex.”

“Wait, you’re not mad at me?”

“No, I’ve no claim on you.” Her eyes told a different story though. I knew hurt when I saw it.

I reached out and touched her arm gently, “you have as much a claim as any woman in this unit.”

That look of hurt deepened and she looked away. That wasn’t what she’d hoped to hear. “Come on, let’s try that wrist twist again.”

She was professional, almost cold, as she talked me through the movements. I followed her instructions and was able to easily slip out of her grip by the end of the session.

…

That evening I didn’t wait for things to happen, I went looking for Hallie. I found her alone in the dorms reading a book. I recognized the cover. It was one of my favorite cheap romances.

“I’ve read that one, its good.” I told her.

She carefully set down the book and looked at me uncertainly. “Sarah lent it to me.”

“Um…do you want to come to my room?” I didn’t have the faintest idea how to seduce a woman. Apparently I didn’t need to though because she nodded, stood up and followed me to my room.

She closed the door behind us but instead of following me to the bed leaned against the wall with her arms crossed.

“Listen, Kate I understand if you don’t want me.”

That caught me by surprise, “What? Why wouldn’t I want you?”

She uncrossed her hands and motioned at her face. With one hand she pushed her bangs out of her eyes so that I could see her better, “The scars. They bother some women.”

They weren’t as noticeable in the soft light of the dimmed overhead lamp but they were still there, the countless pale slashes lines all across her face and neck. I would never say it to her but they kind of reminded me of a child’s attempt at drawing tiger stripes.

When my expression didn’t change she added, “they go down a lot farther than my neck.” 

I met her eyes, “Then I’ll just have to see where exactly they go. Hallie I’ve had a crush on you since you saved me from getting beaten up by older kids in the orphanage. You had the scars then and I still thought you were really cool. My opinion hasn’t changed.”

Her eyes widened, “Seriously?”

I held my hand out to her, beckoning her towards the bed, “Yea.” 

She took my hand.

We started slower than I had with any of the others, just lying together and kissing. Eventually I started to become impatient and tugged at her shirt. She helped me unbutton it and then did the same for me. She brought her mouth to one of my nipples like she knew what she was doing and I found one of her breasts with my fingers.

When I began to squirm against her she tugged at my pants and I helped her get them and my shoes off. Then I did the same for her. Once she was naked I pushed back a little so that I could look at her. 

She wasn’t lying about the scars. They criss crossed her entire body, her chest, her stomach, her legs. It was less noticeable on the paler skin but they were still clearly there. I did stare for a moment. To have that many scars she must have nearly died. Lesions didn’t start appearing on the stomach and legs until the final advanced stage of the fever, which was usually fatal.

She grew uncomfortable under my eyes and reached for the blanket. I stopped her and leaned forward to start kissing my way across her body. She tensed for a moment and then gradually relaxed under my ministrations.

I took my time, exploring her bit by bit, finishing at the apex of her legs putting my tongue to good use. Her back arched beautifully when she came. Once she came down from her high she showed me just as much tender attention.

She brought me to two quick orgasms with her fingers and lips. I kissed her when she was done, “You sure as hell know what you’re doing. I don’t see why you’re so modest, you’ve clearly had lovers before.”

She drew a blanket over both of us, “That doesn’t mean they’ve all been good ones. I had a lover in my last unit, but she always made me feel like she was doing me a favor, like the scars disturbed her but she’d overlook them if I could please her.”

I leaned back against her arms where she was leaning against the headboard, “and the  shield-maiden in that unit?”

“She never touched me. She said it was because she’d come up through training with her unit and didn’t want to fuck someone who was new and only going to be around for less than a year. It was her right to decide that but it still hurt. I think she was just turned off by the scars.”

“I’m not.” I traced a hand down her chest, absently stroking the pale lines on her breasts and collarbone.

“Hmm,” she started to kiss at the curve of my neck again. I leaned against her. I wasn’t quite ready to go again but I was enjoying the attention. 

“What about you and Alex.”

She tensed against me, “You noticed?”

“It’s kind of hard to miss.”

“We fucked a couple times and I thought it meant something. She was the first woman who’d ever really properly flirted with me or tried to seduce me like I was worth the trouble. I thought she actually wanted me and saw past the scars. The truth is she was just looking for a warm body to fuck.

“She’ll screw any woman she can seduce. As soon as she got bored with me she went and fucked Millie and then Sarah and then both together. She’d have tumbled Ash and Sam too if she could. She’s the only one of us who’s also managed to mess around with some of the veteran members of the unit too.”

“If I didn’t know any better I might think that you were calling her a slut.”

She paused, “Something like that.”

“You realize that same definition is going to fit me pretty soon. I’m supposed to eventually sleep with the entire unit.

“You’re the  shield-maiden, it’s not the same thing.”

I turned to look at her, “So it’s okay for a woman to have to fuck a lot of others out of duty but not to want to or chose too?”

“I didn’t mean that.”

“Then you should be more careful with what you say,” and I kissed the underside of her chin just to let her know that I wasn’t upset.

…

The next day at lunch Mel beckoned me over to the table with some of the veteran members of the unit.

“Sit down kid. Sarge says we’ve been neglecting you so we thought we’d try to get to know you better.”

Awkwardly I set down my tray and sat in the seat that had clearly been left open for me. Mel sat beside her and made a series of introductions. There were ten of them, including Sarge and Mel. They were all on the far side of thirty, except Sarge who had to be older, as most commanding officers were. They had enough scars between them to make me wonder why the hell Sam was even sensitive about hers. 

“First we’ve got Cali and Stella. They’re married, or they would be if enlisted women were allowed to be. Cali’s our demolition expert and Stella’s our best sharp shooter.

She motioned towards two women who were sitting close together. One looked like the cliché idea of a female space marine, tall, strong and carved from granite. Her partner was slighter, probably the smallest marine I’d ever seen. She was reminded me somewhat of a picture I’d once seen of an arctic fox on old earth. She wore her golden hair in a long braid and had small delicate features. Her face was unscarred but I could see that her left hand was missing three fingers and there was a bit gone from her right ear.

She leaned across the table and offered me her unmarred hand, “Welcome.” Seeing her closer I realized that her eyes were such a light brown that they were almost golden.

“Up next we’ve got Tali. She’s out best scout. She’s a little twitchy though, try not to ever sneak up on her or she might stab you.”

I considered the lanky dirty blond haired woman, if I were to think of any creature she resembled, it was a coyote. She had a lean attractive face and a sharp nose, marred only by a burn scar that ran from under her left ear to most of her neck on that side. She had a tricksters smile and when she offered me her hand she rubbed her thumb across my palm. 

“Nice to meet you beautiful,” she murmured. She at least seemed interested in me.

“Over here we’ve got the Archer twins.” The motioned towards two dark haired and dusky skinned women. They were likely of  east asian Terran descent, which was uncommon in the capital but not the south of the planet. They each wore their hair long in braids and were a little more on the curvy side than most of the other marines. 

“The one on the right is Mica and the one on the lift is Luca.” You can tell them apart by the scar Mica’s got over her left eye, also she’s a lot more friendly than Luca.”

“Hey,” protested Mica.

“Well it’s true,” said Luca, “you are a lot nicer to these idiots than me, gods only know why.”

“Case in point,” said Mel, “Now moving on before this takes all day. The scrappy redhead is our mechanic Nix, the brunet she’s leaning on the burly shoulder of is her lover Harper. Harper’s one hell of a pilot and navigator but couldn’t find her way out of a paper bag on foot. The dark and brooding woman to their right is Jen, our ship's gunner and heavy artillery specialist. Don’t take it personally if she’s rude to you. She doesn’t like anyone but we love her anyway.”

The dark haired woman just nodded in response. I got the feeling that she wasn’t much for words even on a good day.

“And that’s everybody except me and Sarge and you already know us.”

They all looked at me with varying degrees of interest and I had never felt more on the spot. I knew I should say something, but I had no idea what.

“Why don’t you tell us a little about yourself,” said Stella kindly.

I stared down at the table shyly, “There’ not much to tell. I was born in the eastern slums and ended up in an orphanage by the time I was five. I grew up there until they sent me to the academy two years ago,” said like that my life sounded pretty dull.

“Great, another orphan just like the rest of them.” said Luca. “As if we didn’t already know we were expendable.”

“Luca,” snapped Sarge, “what have I said about talking like that in front of the new recruits?”

“Its true aint it? We lost half our unit and they gave us half starved slum rats to replace them. They don’t care if these girls die, which means they don’t care if we die either.”

No one debated that instead Harper added, “It’s not like any sane parent would let their kid enter the academies now with the way the wars been going. Orphans are all they can get. We should just be glad we got any replacements at all, they’ve been sending out some squads at half strength.”

“Things are that bad in the war?” I wished I hadn’t spoken when I saw the look they all gave me.

“Fuck, they really have kept you in the dark haven’t they honey,” said Stella.

I just nodded, looking down at my food that I didn’t want anymore.

“She’ll learn soon enough. There’s no need for any of you to go frightening her,” said Mel, clearly putting an end to that line of discussion.

No one said much of anything after that. Sarge said we needed to finish up and get back to the barracks. There was to be an inspection in the yard by the Marine Commander, Colonel Black. 

We went back to our dorm for some hurried polishing of boots, riffles and changing into dress uniforms. In training and in battle we’d actually wear camouflage fatigues but apparently the brass wanted to see blue uniforms and shiny buttons.

I had been issued a dress uniform along with everything else. It was still in the plastic packaging everything came in and smelled of dye. 

I re-tied my braid, dusted my boots, threw my gun over my shoulder and I was ready to go. On the way out Stella stopped me, 

“Hold up a second you’ve got a smudge of gun oil on your cheek.”

She licked the back of her hand and then quick scrubbed the side of my face with it. I was struck by a sudden and almost overwhelming memory of my own mother once doing the same.

She straightened my coat, adjusted my barrette and stepped back, “There that’s better.” Her kindness made me almost want to cry. 

“Move out! The review is in two minutes,” Sarge yelled at everyone and we hurried out. The great parade ground was at the northern edge of the base. We found our place among the ten gathered units and nearly two hundred marines waiting.

To my surprise I found myself standing beside Sarge. No one had told me but apparently that was where the  shield-maiden was supposed to stand. I fell into parade rest and soon a pretty deep state of boredom.

Cornel Black was late and we were standing there in the warm afternoon sun for almost forty minutes. My eyes were drifting shut and I was starting to doze on my feet when suddenly everyone around me straightened and saluted. I did too, just a beat behind everyone else.

I got my first site of the Cornel on the far side of the field. I hadn’t actually ever seen that many commanding officers before. Most of the teachers in the companions’ academy were former companions themselves, not high ranking military.

He was a tall grey haired man, with a hawkish nose. He moved stiffly, surrounded by younger soldiers who I guessed were his assistants. As he walked, he kept dictating notes to one who quickly jotted them down on a tablet.

He worked through the units methodically, periodically snapping order or giving reprimands. Apparently no one’s uniform was crisp enough to please him. I tried to stand as stiffly as I could when he approached our unit.

He slowly walked up our line, looking unimpressed and to my utter horror he stopped in front of me. I stared straight ahead trying not to flinch, as he slowly looked me up and down.

“Pretty little thing aren’t you.” Then he reached foreword and caught my chin in his hand, tilting my face up. I nearly jumped out of my skin, jerking away from him.

The bastard actually laughed, “skittish too I see.”

He turned to Sarge as I scrambled to get back into parade rest, looking straight ahead and trying not to tremble. “She’ll have to get over that if she’s to properly service your unit.”

I heard Sarge salute but didn’t dare turn my head to look at her, “She has never failed in her duties sir.” 

“Good, good, well don’t get any bright idea about marry this  shield-maiden like you did the last one. The military can scarcely afford to train another one. How is your lovely wife by the way? I hope she does not find her retirement dull.” He made almost polite words sound lecherous. 

“She is well sir.” Her voice was cold enough to chill blood.

“Very good,” and then he walked away.

I knew something very ugly had just happened. I desperately wanted to sink to the ground and take a few slow breaths, but I couldn’t. I had to keep standing there for the next damn half hour and then salute when the Cornel finally left.

All two hundred soldiers seemed to slump and let out a breath at the same time. I looked towards Sarge but she was already walking back towards the dorms.

“What just happened?” I asked Mel as she fell in beside me.

“There’s some bad blood between those two.”

“I noticed, but why?”

Mel motioned me to fall back a little from the group and lowered her voice, “After Broken Shield the military needed some war heroes to make themselves look better. Coronel Black suggested that they use Sergeant White and Mary. They made a good image, a pair of brave survivors marrying and starting a new life after an ordeal, an honorable captain making an honest woman of a military companion.

“That’s how the PR people planned to pitch it to the media. A news station even did a live interview with Sarge and Mary on a talk show. I don’t know if they didn’t prep Sarge very well for the interview or if she’d just had enough. When the host asked Sarge how she felt about being a war hero she flat out told him that she wasn’t one. She said that she’d failed her soldiers on Broken Shield, led a bad retreat that cost half of them their lives. 

“If Mary had been her old self, she’d have stopped Sarge, talked over her, something. Her PTSD was still pretty bad though, the whole interview she just sat there holding Sarg’s hand and when Sarge started talking about the retreat she just started shaking. They cut the feed when she covered her face to hide that she was crying. 

“The whole thing was the worst press you can imagine and Colonel Black lost a lot of face since he was the one who’d suggested they use Sergeant White and Mary in the first place. He’s born a grudge ever since. At least Sarge only criticized herself and not the military in the interview, if she’d done that she’d have probably been court-martialed As it was they labeled it PTSD and sent her for a psych evaluation.”

That was more than I’d ever heard Mel say at one time. It scared me more than a little bit. I didn’t know a lot about the marines but I did understand that if a higher up didn’t like us things could go badly. We caught up with the others and headed into the barracks to change back into our normal fatigues. 


	5. Chapter 5

What with everything that happened I kind of forgot to wonder about who I was supposed to bed that night. At least I did until that evening. Instead of sparring in the yard the younger soldiers were hanging out in the barracks playing poker on one of the bunks. 

We never actually saw much more of our wages than a few credits so we weren’t using those. You received wages for all of your service, but for the first five years the military kept it in an account and only let you withdraw a small stipend. Even after that about a half got set-aside for retirement, not that most marines lived long enough to collect it.

We were gambling for gum and candy, which they actually gave us a pretty decent ration of. I’d lost most of my ration though, I didn’t have a very good poker face. Sarah and Millie weren’t bad. Sam, as turned out, was very good at not showing anything. Ash wasn’t even playing, she knew she’d give herself away.

I was a little surprised to see Mel walk over to us, she was the first of the veteran soldiers to come back in from the yard. I was pretty intent on the game and not losing my last candy bar so I didn’t really pay attention to her when she came over to watch. When I finally lost the last of my food, she very gently tapped my shoulder.

“Private Kaylan?” her words were formal but her voice was very soft.

I turned to look at her uncertainly.

She offered me a formal bow, “If you are free, I would like to request your company.”

No one had ever said anything that fancy to me before, other than when Sergeant White had first welcomed me to the unit. Someone would tell me later it was actually the formal military way to ask a companion for their services.

“Oy!” Protested Sarah with somewhat less decorum, “I get her tonight.”

Mel quirked an eyebrow, “And who decided that private?”

“We did among ourselves after the tournament,” Sarah said with slightly less confidence. When she glanced towards her friends for support they didn’t stick up for her. She gave a frustrated sigh, “But I guess you’re going to invoke seniority now aren’t you.”

“Yep. Don’t take it too hard, you’ll get your turn.” Her smile was not unkind and oddly enough Sarah didn’t seem to upset, just disappointed like a child who’d been denied a treat.

Mel offered me her hand, “Shall we?”

“Okay,” I was not so good at this formal speaking thing.

I let her lead me to my own room and usher me in, closing the door behind us. Just like Hallie she leaned against the wall, with Mel though it wasn’t a defensive gesture. Instead she took her time to slowly look me up and down where I sat on the edge of the bed. I could see desire in her eyes, something I hadn’t thought I’d found there before.

“I thought you weren’t interested in me,” I said softly.

“Whatever gave you that idea?”

“Until today you’ve barely spoken to me.” I didn’t mean it to sound like an accusation, although it did come out a little like one.

She shrugged, “That doesn’t mean I didn’t notice you. I just figured it might be kinder to give you time to settle in a little, tumble some of the girls your own age before I came sniffing around.”

“I wouldn’t have minded.” Not my best line but I was new to this whole flirting and seduction business.

She pushed away from the wall, “Really? You wouldn’t have been scared by a scarred old solder pushing you onto your back your first night here.”

She stood over me and I became intensely aware of just how much bigger and stronger than me she was. The ghost of fear burned through me followed by excitement. I could see the want deepen in her eyes as my own widened.

She tilted up my chin and kissed me. It was the roughest, most forceful kiss I’d ever had. Ash had been clumsy in her passion and Alex demanding, but not like this, not like a part of me was being claimed.

When she pulled back she whispered in my ear, “You always have the right to tell me to stop but don’t say it unless you mean it.” 

Then she pushed me back onto the bed and set about yanking my clothes off, running her hands over me the whole time. She had to take her weight off of me long enough for me to raise my hips when she got to my pants, and then there was an awkward moment as we both fumbled with boots. I wandered if I should be grateful that she took hers off too.

When I was naked she sat back to look me over again, her gaze methodical and warm.

“You really are pretty,” She ran a hand almost reverently over my collarbone and then a breast, “skin like silk and not a damn mark on you yet. They shouldn’t send girls like you into the war or into the beds of the likes of me.” 

I caught her hand with my own and kissed her fingers playful, “And just what do you plan to do with me that someone else hasn’t already?”

“So many things,” and then she proceeded to show me. She was very, very good with her fingers. I hadn’t thought a lover could get more than two into me but she managed three.

I dug my nails into her shoulder as she fucked me. It hurt a little but I liked it. I felt more stretched than I ever had before and the burn was almost good. She nipped at my ear, “can you take another?”

“No,”

“you sure?”

“Yes,” as much as I was enjoying myself I wasn’t going to do something that my body didn’t feel ready for.

“Shame, maybe next time,” she twisted her fingers inside of me seeking out just the right spot, “one of these days I’d like to fist you.”

That just about gave me a heart attack and right on the cusp of my orgasm too. I dug my nails deeper into her shoulder and came.

Afterwards I wasn’t sure if she’d let me undress her too, but she did. For all she’d liked pushing me onto the bed, she was very patient in letting me slowly explore her. When I unbuttoned her shirt and she shrugged it off I found an ugly star of scar tissue all across her shoulder. 

“Bullet wound?” I asked as I kissed it.

“Shrapnel. I nearly lost the arm from infection but the doctors managed to save it. I still have some pretty bad tendon and muscle damage. I had to re-learn how to do everything with my left hand, even fuck.”

“You’re certainly good at that.”

I worked my way down to her stomach, which was flat and hard with muscles. I had to wonder just how many sit ups she did every day. 

I found another scar blooming across her hip and down her right thigh, the skin smoothed from the healed burn. I ran my fingers over the mark and she jumped slightly as if the touch either tickled or hurt but she didn’t stop me.

“And this one?”

“I was trapped under a burning support beam during the retreat. Jill got the beam off of me but the burn damage was already done.”

“Jill?”

“One of the…well one of the unit who didn’t make it.”

That just about killed the moment. We got back into it and I didn’t ask the story behind any more of her scars. 

…

The next morning was our last before shipping off. We were all given the day off, although none of us were allowed to leave the base. Most of the unit spent the time cleaning and repairing gear, making sure everything was ready to go.

Nothing I owned had ever seen battle so there wasn’t much to do. I took my tablet out into the dorm to sit on one of the empty bunks and started to review a medical text. I was deeply enmeshed in reading about how to treat burn wounds when footsteps approached and two women sat on either side of me.

I looked up quickly and found myself between Sarah and Millie.

“Hey beautiful,” said Millie.

“Hi?” I wasn’t sure what they were up to.

Sarah leaned over a threw an arm around my shoulder, “Millie and I have been talking and we came up with an idea we thought you might like. You see we’re all about to ship out tomorrow and we know that neither Millie nor I am going to get a chance at you tonight. Now that the veterans have started showing an interest one of them is bound to invoke seniority again tonight. This morning though…well you’re not doing anything are you?”

For once I managed not to blush, “You asking me to tumble you?”

“Both of us together,” said Millie, “but only if you want to.”

That actually really, really turned me on.

“Hmm and why would I want that?”

Sarah leaned close enough to nuzzle at my neck, “Because we can make you feel, very, very good.”

“Show me.”

I turned my head and caught her in a kiss, which proved a little awkward because of the angle. Not that she complained.

We barely made it into my bedroom and our desperate scramble to get clothes off was less than dignified. Millie and Sarah were every bit as eager as Ash had been and almost as skilled as Alex.

It still wasn’t that easy to fit three people together, but I did get the feeling that this wasn’t their first threesome. We ended up on the small bed and after some scrambling I ended up lying between them on my side. Millie went down on me while Sarah fucked my cunt from behind with one hand and tweaked a breast with the other. Not surprisingly I came really quickly.

When my tremors finished Sarah asked me to go down on her and I scrambled down the bed, stretched out between her legs and did. Millie moved to lay out beside her and start kissing her and caressing her breasts too. Between the two of us we got her off in a matter of minutes.

It became pretty clear then that Millie was getting more than a little desperate to find her own release. I would have thought Sarah would have been dazed by her orgasm, but she wasn’t. 

She told Millie to get up on her hands and knees over me and Millie began to fuck me with her fingers as Sarah knelt behind her lover and did the same for her. Millie’s ministrations got clumsy and almost forgotten as she lost herself to the pleasure that Sarah was giving her.

I pulled her down for a kiss just to remind her who she was touching. She remembered her duty and set about curling her fingers inside of me. When her thumb found my clit I came with a gasp, which was good because she followed me a moment later, collapsing onto me completely.

It took a little while for us to find the energy to disentangle ourselves and when we did we all stretched out on the very narrow bunk which barely held two bodies comfortably much less three.

I had almost fallen asleep when there was a knock on the door and then it cracked open. Ash froze in the doorway when she saw us. Sarah sat up grinning

“Hey Ash, want to join us."

Ash flushed redder than an apple and shook her head frantically, “no…sorry…I …” Then she bolted.

Sarah laughed, “Gods you’d think she was still a virgin. You did deflower her like you were supposed to, didn’t you Kate.”

I sat up and pulled the blanket around myself. “There’s nothing wrong with being shy.”

Millie stretched, “No there’s not. You should go talk to her though, maybe tumble her again. She’s been acting pretty lonely since the night after you two tumbled. I think she’s half in love with you.”

To my shame I hadn’t really given her much thought since that first night. A lot had been going on.

Sarah climbed out of the bed and started searching the floor for her clothes, “Virgins always fall in love with their first fuck. They are like goddamn baby birds.”

I had heard worse metaphors but that one was pretty terrible.

“You were my first fuck,” snapped Millie crossing her arms.

Sarah paused with a shirt in her hands, “Yea and you love me don’t you?”

Millie’s face softened, “Against my better judgment, yes.”

“Awe, you can’t resist me,” Sarah winked at her and then set about dressing. Millie pecked me on the cheek and then set about the same. I got up myself and we all went to lunch together. We ate with Alex, Hallie and Sam but there was no sign of Ash.

As soon as we were done I went looking for her. I found her eventually in the gym. She had stripped down to her pants and an undershirt and was doing her best to kill a punching bag. At least she’d remembered to wrap her hands or they’d have been bleeding.

I’d never seen her like that, a flurrying of energy and movement. She struck the bag again and again with a rapid series of punches and kicks, sweat dripping down her face, her slightly too long golden bangs sticking to her forehead and getting in her eyes. I was almost afraid to approach her.

“Ash” I called loud enough to be heard of all the noise of the gym and clanking machines.

She froze at the sound of my voice and her hands fell to her side as if all the anger had drained from her in an instant.

“Kate?” she said softly. When she turned to look at me I didn’t see anything but longing in those clear blue eyes of hers.

“I wanted to talk to you,”

“Okay,” she was looking at her hands instead of at me, blushing again.

“Somewhere more private.”

“Right,”

She followed me from the gym and not knowing where else to go we walked out into the courtyard that was used for sparring practice. At the moment it was empty so we sat under the shady side of the wall in the cool grass.

To my surprise she started talking first, “Listen, Kate I’m sorry I shouldn’t have just burst into your room.”

“It’s okay. It’s not like I locked the door.”

She shook her head confusion knotting her forehead. “No, but the door was closed and you were with Sarah and Millie. And even if they hadn’t been I shouldn’t have intruded. I…I just wanted to see you Kate, talk to you, be near you again. I know I have no right to seek your attention when it’s not my turn but gods Kate, you have no idea how much I want you.”

I traced my hand down her arm, afraid to meet the intensity of her eyes. “I’ve missed you too.” Sometimes small lies have to be told. Screw what Sarge had said about not showing too much attention to Ash. She just looked so vulnerable.

“Really?”

“Yes,” I looked up at her, “Ash, I belong to the whole unit but that doesn’t mean you have to stand on the sidelines looking on longingly while I tumble everyone else. If you need me ask. I’m here for you as much as any of them.”

She reached for me and then paused, her hand on my shoulder, “Really?”

“Yea. I think you are sweet and kind and good and I want to tumble you again,” and then I leaned over and kissed her.

It was a damn good kiss but she pulled back all too quickly, “Wait, I’m all gross and sweaty.”

“I don’t mind.”

“Well, let me grab a shower first okay?”

“Why don’t we take one together?”

And we did, which went in a pretty predictable direction. She fucked me against the wall of the shower, slow and deep as I threw one leg around her hip. We pulled apart just long enough to wrap ourselves towels and dash through the dorm to my room where we carried on our activities. 

We fell asleep in each other’s arms and woke in time for dinner. Our friends greeted us just a little too jubilantly when we joined them in the mess hall. 

That night Tali came to claim me. She proved to be a very enthusiastic and skilled lover. I wouldn’t have thought I could have tumbled again after doing to so many times already that day but I definitely could.

Tali was attentive and even playful. I got the feeling that she didn’t take too much in life overly seriously, even sex. I didn’t really get that good a look at her until we were sprawled out naked afterwards.

I noticed then that the skin of her hands was very scarred. There were little slashes of white and pink scar tissue over all of them. There were similar small cuts all over her arms and there were uglier deeper marks on her back, almost as if she’d been beaten. Her small breasts had their own share of what looked like faded burn marks. 

She saw me looking and sighed, “I suppose you’re going to ask about the scars, I’ve never tumbled a woman who didn’t.”

“I didn’t mean to stare. You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to.”

She shook her head gently, tousling that dirty blond hair of hers, “No, you’re the new companion. We’ll be tumbling a lot of the next couple years and if you don’t ask now the curiosity will eat you up. Besides I’m not ashamed, of the scars at least. A couple years ago on the third moon of Tyco I got caught scouting out an enemy camp.

“By some mercy their captain decided to hand me over to their interrogator instead of letting his men their have fun with me. They had woman doing that job, they usually do, maybe men just aren’t creative enough to make really effective torturers. That bitch half tore me apart and took me to hell and back but she never got anything out of me but name, rank and serial number. She raped me too…hell if I know if it was a different kind of torture or if the sick fuck just wanted to.”

“The unit took the encampment three days later and rescued me but I was kind of a mess by then. If it weren’t for Mary, well I’d have probably eaten my own gun. I still wake up screaming and jump out of my skin if anyone startles me. Aside from that I’m as close to sane as anyone else.”

I had no idea what to say. Sorry didn’t exactly cover surviving torture. Looking at her though, she seemed calm not angry. She’d accepted her past.

I did have training in dealing with this kind of thing though. I tried very hard to remember it. “Do you have any triggers I should be aware of?”

She laughed and stroked my hair, “there’s not much you can do to spook me kid. You can bit and scratch as much as you want when we fuck, the touch of a sweet girl like you isn’t going to trigger me. Just don’t touch me while I’m sleeping or wake me suddenly.”

“Okay.”

We lay for a little bit longer and then she kissed me on the forehead and slipped from the bed, “It might be better if we don’t sleep in the same bunk. I’ll see you in the morning.”

She tugged on her clothes and was gone. I was left alone in my bed that still smelled of her and everyone else I’d tumbled there that day. On my final night in the barracks I slept alone for the first time since before I’d tumbled Ash.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm curious if anyone is actually reading this thing. If not, I'm thinking of taking it down until I can get around to a fairly major re-write.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey folks. It sounds like a few people are actually following this story, so I'm going to keep updating. (Someday I will get around to a proper re-write of this work but until then I'll finish sharing what I have written already) Thank you so much for reading my stuff. Please enjoy.

I was woken early by a clamor of sound as Sarge barked everyone out of bed and we scrambled to get ready to ship out. I didn’t have much to do since I’d pack the night before. I quickly ducked into the bathroom and showered, I changed into my fatigues, brushed my teeth, braided my hair and was soon waiting with my bag by the wall. Everything I had fit into a single pack.

The only things in it that were truly my own were my mother’s tatters shawl, a necklace of plastic beads my first lover had once given me and a couple of penny dreadful novels.

A bell rang and we moved out. I was a little surprised to see that we didn’t go for breakfast before we walked to the launch pad. It was utter pandemonium as ten other units also ran around getting ready for pickup. All of our gear was waiting for us and Sarge was hurriedly making sure that it was in the right place to get loaded. I had to give up my pack to go with the rest of the gear.

“we don’t get fed?” I asked Mel groggily, not that I was hungry, being too tired and stunned to eat. Coffee might have been nice though.

“Hell no, trust me kid you want an empty stomach before they put you into cold sleep. You don’t want to be puking up three month old food when they wake you.”

Someone yelled an order out and we were shuffled forward onto a waiting shuttle. It was just big enough to hold three units, maybe sixty people. We strapped in with the heavy shoulder locks in the heavy seats and then the damn thing took off with the sound of a thousand car motors backfiring. 

I was glad that I had an empty stomach because I would have been sick if it wasn’t. I was pressed back flat against my seat and I felt as if I had an elephant sitting on my chest, not that I’d ever actually seen an elephant outside of a video screen.

There were no windows so I did not see anything but metal walls as the shuttle lifted off. It was a short trip, maybe ten minutes before we were up into orbit and then a half hour as the shuttle went through a long series of docking procedures to connect with the heavy interplanetary cruiser that would be taking us to our posting. None of us but Sarge actually knew where.

Eventually we docked and the bay opened with a hiss and the dry smell of filtered air. We unclipped and promptly lost our bearings in the zero gravity. Sarge directed all of the younger recruits to grab onto the metal railings on the wall that made getting around a lot easier.

Space stations and the larger intergalactic cruisers could create their own artificial gravity fields but the military didn’t bother with that for long haul troop transports. Most of the passengers would sleep though the journey anyway.

We and the two units we came up with and us made our way through a long series of tube shaped corridors, basically floating and clinging to the wall poles. I’d been taught how to move in zero gravity but it was a completely different experience to actually be in it. I wasn’t sure if I should puke or laugh at the absurdity of it all.

We eventually branched off from the other two units and reached our “dorm” ie the section of the ship where we’d be put in cold sleep. Four medics were waiting. They directed us to strip down, put on medical gowns, ie a bit of paper and put our clothes lockers. 

I didn’t get scared until they started taking out the cold sleep pods. They had them in the wall like honey combs, so when they wanted to use one they only had to hit a couple buttons on the wall and it would slide it out.

The veteran members of the unit didn’t seem at all worried but it freaked me out when I saw them put Mel under. She climbed into the pod and they strapped her in so she wouldn’t float away. Then they gave her a shot that knocked her out and started attaching tubes.

In the academy they’d explained cold sleep to us. It wasn’t really stasis since you weren’t frozen or anything. They just used drugs to slow down your body to a coma like state. A machine breathed for you, gave you nutrition and monitored your slowed bio status.

You still aged but slower than normal and you didn’t need anywhere near as much food, oxygen or heat as you would if you were awake. The machines could keep you from losing muscles or bone density too, which was a big problem in long space voyages. 

I also knew that things could and often did go wrong. It wasn’t unheard of to lose at least a couple marines every trip. Something could always go wrong with the stasis or a person could react badly to the drugs.

People who had a choice, people with money, didn’t usually travel like this. They stayed awake, they didn’t risk this.

I got more and more scared as my turn came up. I could tell the other younger marines were scared too. There was no way to know how we would react to the drugs until they were given to us. We knew that there was a decent chance that one of us or a marine in another unit was going to go down and not wake up.

My turn came and I climbed into the waiting cold coffin like I was expected to. The medic, a bored looking young woman clipped me in and jammed a needle into my arm. I fell into blackness.

…

The world came rushing back to me in a wave of nausea. Someone was already holding a bag over my mouth at least, so it was less of disaster in the zero gravity than it might have been.

When I couldn’t heave any more, the medic took the bag away and jammed a couple more needles in my arm. Then she unclipped me and told me to move slow and go get dressed.

Everything, everything hurt, even my eyes. I blinked them against the light of the tiny bay in which we floated. I was apparently one of the last to wake because I could see most of my very dazed unit trying to put on fatigues in zero gravity. The veteran members could do it but the younger ones were losing socks, boots, and shirts.

By force of will alone, I grabbed the wall bar and made my way to my tiny locker box, took out my clothes one item at a time and put them on. 

I’d just gotten my shirt on when I realized that my arm was still bleeding, little round balls of red were floating away from the now soaking the bandage the medics had put at the crook of my arm where an IV had gone in. 

“Hey,” I called weakly, finding my voice hoarse and dry. “I’m bleeding.”

The disinterested female medic drifted over and gave me a white bandage, “put pressure on it. You’re clotting factor is probably down. Come over here,” she grabbed my elbow and hauled me to another side of the room. She helped me tug off my now blood stained shirt. She opened a medical kit bolted to the wall, took out a couple shots and gave them to me. Then she took my wrist and put in a needle attached to a tube and some kind of device on the wall. It was all decidedly weird.

Sarge pushed off from the wall and drifted over to us, grabbing the bar so that she could hang to our left.

“What’s wrong with her?” her eyebrows were drawn up with worry.

“The meds messed up her clotting factor. I’m giving her platelets so that she won’t bleed out.”

Bleed out did not sound good, especially now that I could see the bandage on my arm rapidly darkening. The medic noticed it too. She checked my dog tags and made me give her my other wrist so that she could jam in another needle and start infusing me with what could only be blood.

Sarge was looking at me funny, so were all the veteran members of the unit.

“What?” I asked them feeling a little woozy.

“I’m just worried about you kid,” she said gently. It struck me that she probably shouldn’t be calling me kid in front of the medics. It wasn’t properly formal. She definitely shouldn’t have brushed the floating strands of hair out of my face.

“Why are you worried?” I was getting scared.

“I’m just worried, relax okay. You’re safe, you’re not alone.”

That didn’t help. “What the hell is wrong!”

She flinched and said nothing. The medic did though. “If your body doesn’t accept the clotting factor you’re going to bleed out in the next couple minutes. Right now you can’t scab over the needle hole in your arm from when we put it in during cold sleep.

Fuck, fuck, fuck. Of all the ways to die. The academy hadn’t prepared me for this. I knew people died from complications sometimes coming out of cold sleep but…I didn’t think I would.

“I lost a soldier in my unit my first time out to this,” said Sarge.

“That was probably before we started stocking extra blood plasma,” snapped the medic, who in spite of herself, was starting to look worried. “We don’t lose anywhere near as many to temporary drug induced hemophilia. If she gets through the next half hour her body will start making platelets again.”

I guess that was supposed to be reassuring. My bandage had long since soaked through and the medic took it, put it in a bag and gave me a new one. I was getting weak, so she held it down for me. A little cloud of tiny red little globes was starting to float around me. I started to shiver, I was so fucking scared.

Sarge’s hands were warm on my shoulders, “sh, easy kid, you’re going to be okay.” I wanted to bury my face in the fabric of her fatigues and cry on her shoulder, if I even had the tears to spare.

“Don’t let them throw me out into space. I don’t want to die and stay in a strange place. Make them burn me and take the ashes home.”

“You’re not dying.”

“But if I do…there was a girl in the academy. Her names Jessica Walker, we were… well she should know what happened. You’ll send her a message won’t you.”

“I promise.”

I must have blacked out because when everything came into focus again someone was holding a cold pack to the back of my neck. I felt like hell but I wasn’t dead. Somebody else poked a straw in my mouth and I drank, cool water easing my terrible thirst.

“I told you she’d live,” said the medic.

I opened my eyes slowly and took in the storage bay. My whole unit was gathered around looking worried. “Really I’m fine,” I told them and then backed out again.

…

When I woke up again I was feeling a bit better. The lights were dim and the bay silent. I’d been tethered back into one of the open pods and there were a lot of tubes going into my left arm. My elbow was bandaged but the bandage was white. That was good right?

When I looked out from my open pod I could see most of the unit sleeping on the far wall, they were using the same pods we’d been shipped in, except with the lids open and they were using wrist tethers so as to not drift away.

The medic, who was the only woman awake, drifted back over. She grabbed the bar by the pod and started to check me over.

“You’re doing better and your platelet count is almost back up to normal. I’ve put a note in your records that you need to be given platelets before you come out of cold sleep next time.”

“I never want to go into cold sleep again.”

The medic gave me a sympathetic look, “Well then you’re going to have a hard time getting home if you survive the mission. Don’t worry, this won’t happen again. Now you should try to get some more sleep, I’ll take the tubes out of you tomorrow before your unit moves out.”

I closed my eyes  and drifted off.

…

The next morning was something of a circus. I had about an hour of time after waking to try to figure out how to eat or use the bathroom in zero gravity. Then a bunch of blue lights flashed and it was time for us to move off towards our shuttle.

We wound our way through the winding corridors to a big open room where the other ten units were gathering. I had never seen a cave cavern or tunnels before but it looked like a metal version of what I’d once seen in a documentary about caves. The ships skipper, an annoyed looking man with a tablet in hand, kept barking orders for different units to move out down different corridors. The ship’s quartermaster and his assistant were rapidly handing out packs and riffles to the units.

He gave me back my pack that had my number emblazoned on the side, the same as my uniform, and my med kit, and a lighter riffle than the rest of the unit was carrying. Companions didn’t always carry weapons but I’d requested it and Sarge made sure I got one.

Eventually our number came up and we went. Bigger ships actually used a launch bays but ours was smaller so our shuttle docked on the outside of the troop transport and we had to get to it through a dark plastic umbilical tunnel.

I was the last in through a tiny circular airlock. I tumbled through into the small shuttle that was to take us to the planet’s surface, it was a single open space. The whole front of the vessel was a clear window that showed the darkness of space and the shining stars beyond. It was my first glimpse of the outside since I’d boarded my shuttle at the military base and it took my breath away.

I’d always thought space was supposed to be empty, but this was full of light and movement. In the far right corner I could see the brilliant blaze of the star that was the planets sun. Beneath us I hung the great gas giant of Tyco, a slowly turning red and brown ball, inhospitable to life. Closer to us, taking up the entire center of the screen was Kepler, a spinning blur of blue and green, the third moon of Tyco. 

It had been terra formed generations before I was born, once even held a flourishing colony, but years or warfare between the Federation and the Alliance had now reduced much of it to a scorched wilderness.

“Move it and strap in,” snapped Mel when she saw that I was daydreaming, floating in the middle of the shuttle. I quickly moved to the back where I could strap in to one of the twenty-five seats that all faced each other. The back of the shuttle was a set of closed bay doors. I’d come in through a small airlock in the top.

Nix and Harper were already strapped in at the front of the ship in the cockpit. Harper was in the pilot’s chair and Nix beside her in the co-pilot seat. Jen was in a swivel chair behind them with a bunch of controls under her hands. Her eyes were already covered by the wrap around glasses that let her see a 360 degree digital view around the ship. That way she could use both the guns in the front, back and top.

All of the walls and the roof and floor had a real time projection of the space beyond. I guess it was for Harper and Nix’s benefit. It felt weird though seeing stars and blackness projected onto my own skin, as if I were invisible, not even there. It was almost as if I were floating in space even as I was strapped into my seat.

As soon as we were all strapped in and Harper had started to go through the undocking procedures Sarge gave us the first speech I’d ever heard from her. It was short and sweet.

“All right ladies were on our way. In case you haven’t noticed, we’re in a tiny dingy instead of a proper heavy troop shuttle. That’s because we’re going in hot. Those Varcian sons’ of bitches have got control of the planets closer orbit at the moment and they’re going to be coming after us as we go down.

“Lucky for us, we’ve got a bat shit crazy pilot who’s gotten us through worse before. If anyone can get a bucket of bolts through hell and back Harper can. She’ll try to set us down behind our own lines, but there’s no guarantee. We land where we land and you need to be ready to move out and move out fast. You better fucking remember our battle formation. If we do encounter the enemies ground side, we’ve got orders not to engage beyond cover fire. Our own people need us for backup and it’s our duty to get to them. Got it.”

“Yes Sarge!” the unit chorused.

“Right then it’s been an honor serving with all of you and if we don’t make it, I’ll see you on the other side. Now put your damn oxygen mask on and pray to whatever goddess suits you.”

We finished uncoupling from the umbilical and the whole ship shuttered as the rear thrusters fired. We moved slowly at first, almost drifting and then gradually bit by bit we turned towards the planet.

Then, well I don’t know how else to describe it, but we fell. Maybe fell isn’t the right word but the sudden acceleration pushed me back into my seat and it sure as hell felt like we had gravity again.

I now understand orbits and gravity well enough to know that we must have actually come in through a slow arch, gradually turning into the moon’s gravitation and going downwards. At the time though it looked to me like we were going down at an angle.

The moon loomed huge in the front window of the shuttle and the ship screamed and popped around us. I saw for an instant something metal. A satellite shaped object flash past us and then a force like a hammer slammed the side of our shuttle. The projection on the whole right side flickered out and returned to gunmetal grey as we lost the cameras on that side of the ship.

I know I screamed, not that anyone could have heard it through the mask over my face and the cacophony of noise. The whole ship jerked and bucked and our angle changed sharply and abruptly more downwards.

Suddenly we jumped and seemed to alter our angle of descent again. When I looked at Harper she had her hands on what looked like a high tech joystick and had it yanked to the far right.

In the middle of the room Jen was spinning around in her chair her hands dancing over controls. The ship jolted from the recoil as she fired back on whatever the hell had hit us. 

An explosion of metal burst apart on the projection on the back rear bay doors. Jen had hit the thing that attacked us. She pumped one of her hands in the air in triumph but I couldn’t hear what she was yelling behind her mask.

Another blur of metal flashed past and fired something gleaming. Harper saw it in time though and jerked the joy stick again, changing out trajectory and it missed us.

Jen fired and missed and then we were far enough into the planet's atmosphere and the satellite couldn’t follow us. We fell from the sky like a tumbling meteorite, which in truth we were, just a very big one.

The ships heat shields, a plating made out of a special kind of tile, were supposed to protect us and keep the interior from heating up. However even with as little as I knew about ships, I was smart enough to realize that if the heat resistant tile were too damaged on the right side, we were all going to roast to death and there was nothing we could do.

I could see Harper and Nix frantically hitting keys and probably yelling at each other over the intercoms in their helmets. The moon grew bigger and bigger beneath us.

All I could see was blue beneath and black above. I closed my eyes and tried to pray. I’d never learned any religion so all that I could think of was my mother. If I was about to die I hoped she would be there waiting for me.

And then we passed through the clouds and struck the water. The sound of molten hot ceramic screamed like a thousand tortured souls escaping hell when it struck the cold ocean water.

We went down and down and down into the shifting blue green current and then we bobbed back up. Water sloshed off the view screen and the ship bobbed almost peacefully at the heart of the tidal wave it had probably caused.

All around us the metal hissed and popped. I was only vaguely aware that we were again in gravity, a field that felt only slightly heavier than the one in which I had lived my entire life. Kepler, the third moon of Tyco, was roughly the same size as my home moon.

Slowly, one by one we took off our masks and helmets. The first sound I really focused on was Harper laughing almost hysterically as she pumped her firsts in the air.

Harper tugged off her helmet,“Boo yah! Who’s the hotshot?”

“Harper!” snapped Sarge, “Brag later. Get this hulk back up into the air now!”

“Right Sarge,” she turned back to her keys and something fired up under the ship. We wobbled up into the air, dropped a little bit, and then wobbled some more.

“Fuck, the thrusters are damaged,” swore Nix. It was one of the first times I’d ever heard her speak.

“She’ll still fly,” promised Harper and then we rocketed foreword. “we’ll just be a little close to the ground.”

Which seemed to mean that we were practically skimming over the water, but we were moving. We picked up speed and slowly gained a little altitude. 

“How far are we from our own lines?” asked Sarge.

Harper looked at the board and swore, “eh…about five hundred miles. At least we are alive right?”

“Just get us there private.”

After about thirty minutes I caught sight of green on the horizon.

“Land in sight Sarge,” said Harper.

“Get us high enough not to hit the trees but keep low enough to stay under radar.

“No worries, the ship won’t go that high anymore anyway.”

“Gods help us.”

We flew over a windblown coast of sharp cliffs of a dark rock and then over a dense forest of dark trees. I had never in my entire life actually seen a beach or a forest for real. I was awestruck, leaning against my seat restraints and looking down. The rest of the young soldiers were just like me. None of the older ones seemed to give a damn though, some actually appeared to be asleep.

I watched the forest fly past beneath us. My heart ached to feel the cool of those dense trees, to smell whatever damp earth actually smelled like. When I closed my eyes I could almost imagine it. I fell asleep in spite of myself. I guess I was coming down from a lot of adrenaline. 


	7. Chapter 7

I was woken by the sound of an explosion as the ship shuddered around us.

“Fuck! We are going down. Hang onto your hats ladies!”

I had about a half second to wonder why Harper was talking about hats before the trees rose up to meet us. We hit the canopy hard and fast, tearing a swath through it with a horrendous screeching wail of broken wood.

I was slammed so hard against my restraints that I felt the breath forced from my lungs and my ribs creak. We slid across the forest floor, clearing a path of downed trees and scarred dirt in our wake and then, slowly we crashed to a stop.

Sarge was out of her seat before anyone else, “Move out! Move out! Get your bag, get your gun. Move!”

I hit the auto release of my restraints and wobbled to my feet. My hands shook as I hit the button for the compartment that held my bag. It popped open and I struggled to get my bag on and my rifle slung over my chest.

“Move! Move they’re coming! Run and get under cover” screamed Sarge as the rear loading bay of the shuttle popped open.

I stumbled towards it with the rest of the unit. I didn’t know where to go once I was standing on the smoldering earth beneath the blindingly bright light of a foreign star.

Mel grabbed my hand, “Come on kid. Stick with me.”

We ran for the cover of the trees. We just reached it, diving into the protection of the green canopy when a ship screamed above us and fire reigned down from the sky.

Mel slammed me down into the wet earth and we lay listening to our empty shuttle explode. Then she was dragging me back onto my feet, “Move,”

I clutched at her hand and followed her as we ran through the dense underbrush. Every root and bush seemed intent on tripping me yet Mel moved through them as if they weren’t even there.

All around us I could hear explosions, but the damp trees didn’t catch. We ran and ran, me stumbling all the way. After a while the explosions stopped. I guess the Varcian’s did not think it was worth setting down and trying to track us through the dense forest. 

The air was as cold as any I’d ever felt in the city and had an icy dampness that set me to shivering. The forest was not full of the pleasant shade I’d imagined and I’d certainly never dreamed of so many rocks.

At last Sarge called for a halt and I slumped against a tree gasping for breath. I’d never run so much, hell never run on anything besides a treadmill before. My lungs ached and my bag’s straps were tearing at my shoulders.

Stella walked over to me, moving easily with her own bag that had to be at least half her size. She quickly tugged on a few of the straps of my bag and then yanked on my waist strap.

“Better?” she asked softly.

I shifted my shoulders and found that my bag felt as if it weighed a great deal less, “Yea, thanks.”

“Good. Now eat and drink.” She opened a side pocket of my bag and took out an energy bar and then also pointed at the tube that connected to the bags internal water bag. I obediently sipped some of the water and opened the energy bar to take a bite.

Stella nodded and then moved on to Ash, was looking equally stunned, and repeated the whole procedure.

When I looked around I was relieved to find that my whole unit was there. We hadn’t lost anyone. Sarge was standing with Mica looking at the screen of a gps device. When she was satisfied she held up a hand and we all fell silent.

“Alright ladies, were twenty miles to east of one of our territories in the middle of no-man’s land. There are too many Varcian light ships in the air for us to have any hope of a pickup, not that a skimmer could land in this damn forest anyway. The good news is that it’s mostly flat forested terrain and we’ve got cover the whole way. It also doesn’t look like the ship that shot us down gave enough of a fuck to put down troops after us. The bad news is that sunset is in about a half hour and the nights here are fucking cold. We aren’t making our lines before then.

“If we want to see sunrise we had better make camp now. Let’s just pray the Varcians don’t want to kill our sorry asses enough to come after us in the freezing night.”

We found as dense a clump of trees as we could and then hurriedly erected the five emergency shelters we had. They were small, domed little tents of tough artificial fiber, designed to create no heat signature if the enemy scanned for one.

Sarge told everyone to get into their tents and stay in them, we didn’t want any heat signatures showing up once the sun set in case our enemies were scanning for us, and we’d be trying hard enough to stay warm once the light was gone.

I used the bushes, put the rain cover on my pack before I set it outside the tent and then crawled into the tiny shelter I was sharing with Cali, Stella, Ash and Hallie. All of the members of the unit had been split throughout the tents.

There really wasn’t much room to do anything but stretch out. Everyone was already there, sitting in what space they could find. Cali had an arm around Stella who was already starting to shiver.

I got out my sleeping roll which was a thin, heat reflective sleeping bag as light as tissue. It folded up small enough to fit in a pocket of my cargo pants. I wondered where I could put it down and not get in anyone’s way.

Stella and Cali had apparently been through a situation like this before and knew what to do. Stella did all the talking.

“Kate, you’re the smallest of all of us and most likely to go hypothermic. Lie down in the middle. I’ll be on your left and Cali will be on the outside. Alex you lie down on Kate’s right and Hallie you sleep against the wall of the tent. Alex you should share you sleeping bag with Hallie’s or she’s going to get too cold being on the outer edge.”

“I’ll be fine,” said Hallie.

“No, you won’t,” said Stella. “Get over yourself and share the bag. Its body heat not sex.”

She scowled, “I’m not fucking sharing a bag with her.”

Stella looked too tired to argue. “Fine, well it’s your fingers and toes not mine that might freeze off. Break open some of the hot packs from your kit and make sure you put some at the bottom of your bag and another one in each of your gloves. Alex, go ahead and share your bag with Kate, she might as well be as warm as she can.”

After a bit of scrambling around we all settled in. I quickly discovered that a military sleeping bag could indeed fit two bodies but it was pretty intimate. If we hadn’t tumbled before it would be pretty awkward.

Stella and Cali curled up together in their shared bag and Hallie broke open about half of her chemical heating pads and curled up as small as she could against the wall of the tent. I guess she was still mad at Alex about the whole shower sex thing.

I was too tired to think about it and too content with Alex’s arms around my waist and my face buried in the warmth of her shoulder. She was too stunned and exhausted from the day to even try and flirt. I closed my eyes and drifted into sleep on the hard ground.

I was woken in the middle of the night to a strange sound. The moment my eyes opened I realized just how down cold the air was. I swear I had ice crystals on my eyelashes.

I could see nothing in the dark but I swear the sound of chatter teeth was coming from the other side of Alex.

“Hallie, you okay?” I called softly.

“just cold,” her voice trembled as she spoke.

The sound must have woken Stella because I felt her shift on my left side. “stupid girl, I told you to share your bag. Alex wake up and go get in Hallie’s bag and lie on the outside before she freeze to death.”

I almost gasped from the rush of cold air as Alex slipped from our shared bag. I heard the shifting as she pushed Hallie away from the wall of the tent and crawled into her bag. Gradually the sound of Hallie’s chattering teeth stopped.

I rolled over and lay a hand against her cold cheek, “You okay.”

“Better,” she said softy.

“Stop moving so much,” grumbled Alex. 

“Sorry.”

Hallie settled down and then I started to shiver. I searched the pockets of my coat until I found my own supply of hot pads and cracked a couple of them open. The chemical heat helped but it still wasn’t as good as live body against me.

I woke again shivering just as the light of dawn began to seep into our tent. The chemical hot pads had burned out. I cracked a couple more, kicked a few down to warm my feet and clutching the others in my fingers.

I could hear slow and steady breaths from Ash and Hallie. Stella and Cali were talking, very, very softly. I felt as if I were intruding and didn’t try to make out their words. I closed my eyes and drifted off again.

Sarge’s barking voice woke me probably less than a half hour later. We broke camp in about five minutes and I found myself standing shivering in the early morning chill as I munched on another protein bar.

My shoulders ached from the weight of my pack but I knew better than to complain. I was carrying probably half the weight that everyone else was, but I hadn’t had half the physical training any of them had received. We moved quickly through the dense forest. The veteran members went first, doing what they could to beat down the underbrush for the rest of us. 

The hours all seemed to meld together after a while and I was aware of nothing but vague feelings of hunger and thirst that I assuaged with more food bars and water. All around us the air grew warm and a cacophony of birdsong rose, far louder than I ever realized it could.

I was still surprised when I saw all the tiny little feathered bodies darting through the branches above us. The sun rose big and golden in the sky, far bigger than the star I had lived my whole life beneath.

My feet and legs soon began to ache. I didn’t take any of the stimulants or painkillers from my med kit though. I’d save them until things were worse. By midday my entire body hurt far more than it ever had before. The other young members of the unit were starting to look equally miserable.

When we paused at what must have been noon I cracked open my medical kit and passed around minor painkillers and stimulants just like I’d been trained to do. I took a few myself. It wouldn’t do anyone any good if I started limping from aching feet. None of the veterans needed them.

We moved out again and made good time. My feet felt as if they’d fall off by the time the sun began to dip low in the horizon. I would have thought that we could cover twenty miles in a day but it’s not so easy to move through a forest. We were probably barely making three miles an hour.

We stopped at sunset and made camp again. I broke open a proper MRE and bolted down some of what was apparently supposed to be meat loaf. I kind of had my doubts but it was food and at least wasn’t another protein bar. This time Hallie made no protest about sharing her bag. I was left curled up alone between Hallie and Stella. I broke more of the hot packs but I still woke up shivering in the middle of the night. My trembling must have woken Stella.

“You okay honey,” she mumbled sleepily.

“Cold,”

I heard her whisper something to Cali and then there was a brief shifting of movement and she crawled into my bag. Her body was soft and warm against my own. She slipped her arms around my waist and pulled me flush against her.

I had just started to drift back into sleep when her hands began to wander. I almost jumped when one hand found its way beneath my shirt and the other under the waist of my pants.

Her lips were soft but insistent against my own. I kissed her back and arched against her deft fingers. She found my clit and a nipple and worked them both as she deepened our kiss. I came almost embarrassingly quickly and she brought me off a second time for good measure.

Feeling bolder than I had before I slipped my hands into her clothes and did the same to her that she’d done to me. She moaned into my mouth and arched against my touch. When I slipped two fingers into her I found the heat of her body incredible. She bucked against me and muffled the sound of her orgasm against my neck.

We lay panting for a moment and then gradually drifted into sleep, tangled up in the warmth of each other’s arms.


	8. Chapter 8

We woke before dawn and used the darkness to slip through the last three miles of no man’s land into our lines. When we could just make out the distant encampment of the Terra Segundan’s Sarge took out a radio and spoke a code into it, a mix of numbers and letters.

The final quarter mile was a quick run across scorched ground and a few bushes. Now that Kepler’s only sister moon had set, I could see nothing more than a hands breath in front of me. We dared not use any lights. Mica went first scanning the ground for mines. Luca used ordinary metal wire cutters to clear the barbed wire that occasionally blocked our way. We couldn’t risk the feint light an energy cutter could cause.

When we reached our first abandoned trench, Mica jumped down first and helped the rest of the unit down as Luca helped them up on the other side. When my turn came she offered me her hand to guide my jump down and passed me to the other end of the trench where Luca reached down and pulled me up.

We had to cross three trenches like that. The second was full of water that soaked my pants to my knees. The third reeked of something sickly sweet that I had never smelled before. It wasn’t until I stepped on something soft that split beneath my boot with a putrid stench, that I realized what we were surrounded by.

I had to bit my lip not to vomit and reached frantically for Luca’s hand. She pulled me up easily. No one said anything about the bodies we’d trod on as we crossed the final stretch towards our own lines.

Sarge made us all stop and took out a little pin light. She flashed it quickly towards the far trench. We waited shivering in the mud, praying that the dawn wouldn’t come too soon and find us out on our own waiting to be shot.

A minute later a second tiny beam of light flashed back at us.

“Move,” hissed Sarge and we did. Those final two hundred yard seemed the farthest I had ever run in my life. The occupants of the trench, just vague figures in the dark, were waiting for us.  Someone even ran forward and thrown a series of boards over the barbed wire so that we could cross it.

Strong hands helped me down into the dry ditch and then hurried me out of the way. No one really breathed until we were all down safe and sound.

Then a man, who’s face I could not make out in the darkness, spoke, “Hell I wasn’t sure you lot were going make it. Come on, the Lieutenant is going to want to meet you.”

He showed us through the dark warrens, past more faces I couldn’t see. High above us the sky was starting to lighten. Shortly we came to, what seemed to me a cave with a rough metal door, although once it was opened and light spilled out I realized that it was a small room built within the dirt walls of the trenches, complete with a tin roof.

A gruff looking man and a pretty young woman were sitting at a table with a pile of maps in front of them.

They both rose when Sarge entered the room. None of the rest of us followed her, there really wasn’t room. The man crossed towards Sarge in about three steps and to my surprise lifted her off her feet in a bear hug, “Lily you tough old bitch, you have no idea how happy I am to see you.”

“You better be you old bastard,” she said once he’d set her down. “We just crossed twenty miles of frozen hostile territory to come help out your sorry ass.”

In spite of all the swearing they were grinning at each other like fools.

“You made it though. I’ve always said you’ve got the devil’s own luck. You’re the only one of the three units that were supposed to come to us who’ve made it. The hundred and tenth got shot down in orbit and we lost contact with the Fifty-Ninth after they crash landed.”

“Fuck…what about the other units that launched with us? They were going to different parts of the trench.”

The big man shrugged, “Don’t know. Nothing’s come in over the airwaves. The brass has had us all on shortwave radios and a need to know basis since our communication code got hacked by the Varcians about a month ago.”

“Figures, and the situation here?”

“We’re on the edge of the trench line and damn undermanned. I’ve only got two units here, my own and Sergeants Cooper’s Fifty-Eighth. I lost a third of my men in a trench raid last spring and they sent me poorly trained boys to replace them. Cooper’s unit might as well be school girls and their poor sergeant is barely out of the academy herself, no offense Cooper.”

“None taken,” said the young woman at the table as if she’d heard all it before.

“So what’s the status of your unit sergeant?”

“Half veteran, half green but the newbie’s do not seem too bad,” she tilted her head towards the rest of the unit where we were waiting outside the doorway in the early morning chill, fascinated by the conversation we’d just witnessed.

“Right, well you probably want to get them settled in. Report back here at 0700 hours.”

“Will do Lieutenant,” she saluted and we left the shack that passed for a command center.

The same man who’d brought us, who I could now see in the morning light was very tall and dark haired led us back though the warrens of trenches to another half underground building. Its roof was the same sort of tough tin and two of its walls were dug into the earth, which I would later learn was a kind of fairly hard limestone.

“This is the women’s barracks it’s big enough to hold two units. You can bunk here with the Fifty-Eighth. Go ahead and drop your kit than I can take you to the mess.”

When he pushed open the door we were met by the soft sound of sleeping breaths and then the angry bark of an woman’s groggy voice, “Close the damn door it is fucking cold.”

We ducked in and whether we meant to or not woke up about all twenty-women who were sleeping on the sleeping sconces carved right into the limestone. They were excited to see us, or at least curious. Someone lit an electric lantern on one of the room’s only tables.

A flurry of introductions and questions occurred as we dumped our bags. I went to take one off the empty bunks, but to my surprise a blond young man tapped me on the shoulder. I couldn’t figure out why he was in the women’s barracks at all until I noticed the blue stripe on his uniform. 

“Hey,” he said, “my name’s Jake. I’m the Fifty-Eighth’s companion.”

“Kate,” I said offered my hand and he shook it. I felt not calluses on his palm, he as much a stranger to hard labor as I was. “I’m companion to the Forty-Second.”

“I’m glad to meet another companion, it’s been kind of lonely. The only other one here is Joshua and he’s kind of a cranky bastard.” He gave me an almost embarrassed smile. “Anyway, I meant to tell you that you don’t have to take one of the normal bunks, unless you want to. There are two rooms at the front of the barracks for the sergeants and two more at the back the barracks for the companions. You can take one at the back.”

He showed me the back wall, deeper against the hillside. There were two doorways, only one with a fairly crude metal door. I guessed that the one without the door was mine. Someone had been kind enough to hang a curtain for me, one that looked just like half the bunks had. I looked in, eager to dump my pack and gun. There wasn’t much there, although there was actually something resembling a bed which rather surprised me. A fairly large military grade plastic mattress was set on a hard plastic quick assemble frame. I would learn later that before the war heated up Terra Nueva had had a chance to build and supply most of what was now in the trenches. A pile of bedding, still in its wrapping sat on top. There was even a shelf carved into the wall for me to stow my gear. A single electric light burned on a wire up on the tin roof. I was kind of impressed.

“You set this up?” I asked

“Nah, I just got the bedding out of storage for you and the rest of your unit when we heard you were coming. The units that finished their tours of duty before us carved out the barracks and rooms. They did a damn fine job too, it barely floods. They left a bed and mattress in both the companion’s quarters.

“It’s nice,” better than I’d pictured anyway.

I dumped my bag and went to join the rest of the unit for breakfast.

…

I followed the flow of soldiers out the door and across the mud swept courtyard to the mess hall. It wasn’t built into the hill but made of plaster and sheet metal on all sides with a tin roof. It was our mess hall, medical tent, gathering place and just about everything else. It had clear plastic windows that let in light so it wasn’t as cave like as the dorms but it wasn’t half as warm. If our electric shields ever failed though it would take only one well placed shell to blow the thing sky high.

I walked in to the smell of nutrient rich porridge and synthetic coffee. Two of the girls from Fifty-Eighth were tending the pots on the gas stove and doling out the food at a long counter. I would learn later that we didn’t have a designated cook, like a larger trench would have, but instead took it in turns to cook.

The room was big enough to house three times as many units as were there and had about as many quick assemble camp chair of connected plastic and long tables of the same make. Just about everything but the dorms in this trench had come down in a packet form on an orbital drop and been assembled.

The young women from our barracks ate with us along with about twenty men, some about Sergeant White’s age and some as young as me. The veteran members of the men’s unit and the veteran members of my own greeted each other excitedly. There was a fair amount of laughter and swearing. Apparently they’d served together on Io a couple years back.

I sat with the younger members of my own unit. The porridge tasted generic as it always did but it was warm and the coffee was bitter but at least had caffeine. I carried my plate to the wash bucket when I was done. 

I would learn later that we did have running water, at least in that the previous units had connected a series of pipes to a nearby spring and routed it to our trench. It wasn’t that much though, so we just had one spigot that filled a water tank on top of the mess and ran down to a sink in the mess that drained out into the yard and another spigot out by the dorms. 

If you wanted to bath you filled a bucket and took it back to the dorms to do the best you could with a sponge. At least most of the women did, the men were pretty much okay with just washing by the spigot outside. How they didn’t freeze to death I don’t know.

If you wanted warm water, then you had to heat it on the stove in the mess. About once a week at least one of the women would heat up the biggest pot and everyone who wanted it would get some warm water.

It all came a bit as rude shock to me, since I’d lived most of my life in institutions where even if there hadn’t always been hot water, there’d always been showers.

That morning though, I was a little too busy shivering to think about washing. I had on my coat, gloves and hat and even some extra under layers but I just couldn’t adjusted to my nose feeling cold all the time.

Once we’d all eaten Sergeant Cooper showed us around the trenches. They were, as I had originally guessed, made up of a lot of interconnected warrens of dug out earth. There were enough barracks for at least eight units but there were only the three units in our part of the trenches. The two least leaky of the barracks were where everyone were living 

We shared with the Fifty-Eighth. Lieutenant Bernard and the Sixty-Second took the other one next ours that was equally well carved into the soft limestone of the small hillside that lay to the left of our trenches.

The trenches themselves were a complex maze of muddy corridors, shored up with planks of wood cut from the forest. There were deliberate dead ends and choke points, designed to help defenders and screw over attackers.

Barbed wire was strung over the top and if you climbed up on the wooden blocks that let you see far enough to stand watch you could see the wasteland beyond and not much else. Well beyond the lines of the trenches sat the high arching ridges of the black mountains and the forest we’d come down from. When I turned to look behind us there were trees almost up to the back of our own trenches. 

Sergeant Cooper said that beyond the forest was a much larger Terran Nuevan base. It was where most ships launched from and it provided the energy shield that covered all of our own trenches. So long as that shield held no bombardments could touch us, especially orbital ones.

We had a much smaller machine set into our hillside that could provide a temporary emergency shield and also disrupt the larger shield around the trench to let people in. They’d used that same machine to let us in when we’d come.

The problem with the whole system was that it relied on machines and they could often be outsmarted or hacked. The whole unit lived in fear of the great shield failing or the Varcians finding a way through it. The times when that happened were when we would have to really fight and blood would be spilled to hold the ground.

Our satellites mostly protected us from orbital bombardments but they couldn’t protect us from below radar missiles, explosives and projectiles. In spite of centuries of technology a lot of war often came down to men and women on the ground with guns.

Three months before we arrived, the Varcian’s had been able to figure out the frequency of the great energy shield and offset it in a hole just big enough to put troops and tanks through. Our new trench, Charlie Alpha West had held and the Bernard’s unit and another had killed the soldiers that tried to take it but at the cost of heavy casualties. More importantly they’d been able to protect their own generator and get their smaller shield up and running and closed the gap in the great shield.

Sergeant Cooper told us this whole story as we walked through the muck. She and her unit hadn’t been there yet when this all happened but Sergeant Bernard had and he’d told her about it.

They were still working to re-dig and shore up the trench walls where they’d been damaged by artillery shells. The original latrines had also unfortunately suffered an artillery shell in the last attack, apparently the Varcians might have mistaken them for a munitions shed. The units had just finished digging and covering a new set. They were fairly far from the dorms, which was good for avoiding the smell or risking water contamination but a long cold dash in the night.

There was a large cleared circular space among the warrens of trenches that served as training and practice area.

“Just watch out for the hole in the middle of it, a shell landed there and blew a lot of earth up. There’s a big wooden board over it now but it can shift under you. Sergeant Cooper flicked her dark bangs out of her eyes and walked a circle around the aforementioned boards. They had actually set down a door, one which looked pretty singed. I wondered if maybe they’d scrapped it from the blown latrines.

She led us past a and a pile of boxes and beyond our lines towards a nearby field at the edge of the forest.

Laid in the short grass beneath the pale fall sun were rows upon rows of two barred wooden crosses. She didn’t have to tell us that this was where all the soldiers who’d fallen in the last attack lay beneath the hard earth. The military wasn’t going to pay to ship them home. Families were lucky if they ever got as much as the dog tags. If I died here, I’d be laid in that earth, if I was lucky. If I wasn’t I would lie at the bottom of a trench and future units would step on me. I felt sick.

After that sobering revelation she led us back towards camp and started to explain work and watch schedules.

…

That night, as I was breaking open the plastic bag of bedding and laying it down on the mattress, I heard a knock on the wall.

“Come in,” I called.

Harper and Nix poked their heads in.

“Hey,” said Harper. “We were wondering if we could join you tonight?”

I finished laying the blanket and sat down on the edge of the bed, “Both of you?” I still hadn’t set out a schedule, nor really expected to need one yet my first night in the trench. I suppose the absence of me laying out any plan made it not unreasonable for them to ask. 

Nix and Harper shared a look and then whispered something between them. Harper spoke again. 

“Only if it’s alright with you. We’re willing to trade both our nights for one but we’ll understand if you don’t want to do a couple. We don’t mess around separately though, so if you can’t do us both we won’t trouble you.”

“No, its fine. You two won’t be the first time I’ve lain with a couple.” Truth be told, while I might have well refused most other women in the unite that night. I would not refuse them. They’d seen all of us safely through the cold dark atmosphere and the fire of the atmosphere to the earth. I felt for them a strange mix of awe and hero worship and somehow it combined into a desire even I couldn’t ignore.

Harper laughed, “Stella and Cali have already gotten to you then.”

I blushed, “Not exactly.” I’d been with Sarah and Millie together but I wasn’t sure if I should say anything about that to Harper. One of the few things the academy had really drilled into us it was not talking about who or how we’d tumbled with other members of the unit.

Harper shrugged and stepped into the room, “I can promise we’ll do our best to please you.”

I started to unbutton my shirt, “Isn’t that my job.”

“Oh honey you have a lot to learn,” laughed Harper as she sat on the edge of the bed and pulled me into her arms.

She wasn’t a forceful kisser, more slow and relaxed like she knew we had all night. Nix was a little more frantic when she sat on my other side and started to kiss at my neck and nip at my ear. I jumped a little when she bit my ear lobe a little too hard.

Harper broke our kiss long enough to chide her, “Nix, don’t bite her without asking. She might not like it.”

“Sorry,” 

Her ministrations slowed down a little bit but did not cease. Between the two of them they started to tug of my clothes and I did my best to get Harper’s off. I quickly found that the pilot had a very nice pair of breasts and liked to have them sucked.

As soon as we were both naked she laid back onto the bed and pulled me over her. We kept kissing and her hands began to explore by body as I did the same for her. I barely noticed that Nix was gone until I heard a sudden buzzing sound.

It so surprised me I rolled off of Harper and turned around to see what it was. Nix sat on the edge of the bed, a small black bag open next to her. She held up a tinny softly buzzing device, no bigger than the palm of her pointer finger, to which it appeared she’d attached it.

“what is that?”

“Vibrator,” said the red head.

I blinked, “It doesn’t look like one.”

Harper nudged me, “You’ve probably been watching too much porn, they’re not all shaped like dildos. Some are made to actually please women. Nix designed this one, It’s perfect for the clit.”

I looked at the little blue thing on Nix’s hand. I wasn’t sure how far I trusted the mechanics ability to make electrical devices and as far as I could tell Harper was a little too crazy to have any sense of self preservation. “It’s not going to shock me or anything is it?”

Nix smiled, and looked just a little gleeful, “Not in the way you’re worried about.”

“Lie back honey, let Nix show you what she can do,” Harper whispered to me and I lay back against her. Nix crawled up between my legs and let me touch her hand, looking over the vibrator carefully. It really did just look like a blue finger covering with little plastic ridges. I checked for any sign of suspicious wiring but it looked fine.

Nix clicked a little button on the side and it started to hum. She gently rubbed it against my cheek and it felt funny but not bad. Then she traced it down my neck and in a slow circle around my breast. That started to feel good, especially when she brought it up to my nipple. I jerked as the gentle sparks of pleasure jumped through me, then she went lower. She traced my inner thigh until it began to tickle and then spread my lips and brought the toy where it was meant to go.

I made a sound not unlike a gasp of surprise and clutched at the bed. Harper covered my hands with hers,

“Feels good huh?”

I was practically panting, trying not to writhe off the bed.

“Yea,” I managed breathless.

Nix began to slowly move the vibrator in little exquisite circles. She had an almost fiendishly happy grin. I wondered if I should be troubled that it was exactly the same one she’d had when our shuttle had been on fire and falling through the atmosphere.

I didn’t really care though. Her touch just felt too good. She brought one free hand to a breast and then covered it with her mouth. She had a very talented tongue. 

Harper reached to find the other breast and then began to kiss the back of my neck and shoulder. I arched between them, utterly lost to pleasure. Then Nix did something to the vibrator, speeding the damn thing up.

I came with a far louder cry than I wanted to in a room that only had a curtain, not a door. I slumped against Harper. She reached down and stroked my over sensitized clit and slowly, methodically worked me to a second orgasm that was a balm after the nerve exposing fire of the first.

Nix waited about thirty-seconds before asking, “Want to try another toy.”

I opened my eyes and just stared at her in disbelief, “You have more?”

“Oh yea,” she flashed all her teeth when she smiled.

Harper sat up, “Don’t overwhelm her, all things in time. Right now I think she wants to rest and I want you to fuck me.”

Nix seemed just as happy with that. She rummaged around in the little black bag and slipped more of the blue things onto all the fingers of her hand. I rolled out of the way and she began to pleasure Harper.

I watched sleepily as she brought the pilot to a series of quick orgasms. I was kind of surprised to see that she could still slip her fingers into Harper even with the sheaths on them. Harper came in a series of short, quick orgasms that made her whole body shudder.

Nix stripped off the toys and pulled her into her arms. Harper kissed Nix once and then rolled her under her and slipped her fingers inside. The mechanic was not terribly dignified in her pleasure, she grabbed at Harpers shoulders and made small desperate sounds with each trust of her lovers fingers. She came with a sharp cry and then lay back.

They stretched out together, content in each other’s arms. I could have gone again, even wanted to, but it didn’t look like they did. I tugged the blanket up from the foot of the bed and threw it over all of us. The bed was small and even if they weren’t holding me their warmth would still be welcome in what was certain to be a cold night.

I lowered the spirit lamp and curled up. I could see my breath though the air wasn’t half as cold as it had been in the tent and beneath the blanket beside two sleeping bodies I was warm.

I woke to the faint sound of rain. Hex and Harper were already gone. I was starting to get used to falling asleep with a woman beside me and waking alone. I wasn’t sure why it bothered me so much but it did. I slipped from the covers into the cold air and tugged on my uniform to face the day. 


	9. Chapter 9

Over the next couple of days we adjusted to the trenches. The younger women of my unit  got on well with the women of the Fifty-Eighth and the younger members of the Sixty-Second. They were all orphan brats like us. Even Sergeant Cooper was just two years older than her soldiers and fresh from the academy. She was green but smart and capable.

She listened to the advice of the veteran soldiers and never gave bad orders. Her women respected her. The unit companion Jack and I quickly formed a fast friendship. He was in truth the first male friend I had ever had, girls and boys had been mostly separated in the orphanage and everywhere outside of a few classes in the academy.  

He was shameless and charming flirt with his unit in a way I had never learned to be. He could get the woman in his unit to smile or laugh with just a few words and I could tell they all adored him. The times I watched him interact with his unit he was like a butterfly, a smile or a kiss for all of them and but nothing more for one than another.

The companion to the Sixty-Second, Joshua, proved to be less of a cranky bastard than Jack initially described him. Joshua was a lean battle worn soldier in his mid thirties who had been with is unit from the begging and carried as many scars as any other veteran.While he did not suffer fools lightly and had little patience for those who annoyed him, he was always kind to me.

By my second day in the trenches he was filling in the glaring gaps of my fairly sketchy medical training. He was a patient teacher willing to repeat lessons, although not so patient when he thought I wasn’t paying attention. He was doing the same for Jack.

Most companions never got real medic training but Joshua had managed to complete a course in field medicine while his unit was stationed for two years at a larger base. He had added to his knowledge over the years through book courses.

He’d certainly needed his skills. Most of the veterans in his unit could boast scars from wounds he’d sewn up or patched. The newbie’s in his unit liked him, or at least found him more approachable than Lieutenant Bernard. He would actually listen or help when they brought problems or disputes to him. I often saw him resolving arguments.

Jack very much did not play that role in his unit. All issues went directly to Sergeant Cooper for resolution. Jack carefully kept out of all arguments. He admitted to me that whenever he’d tried to help solve any dispute he’d only ended up causing too much jealousy on the part of the woman who was ruled against.

I had no idea what my job with my own unit in this regard was supposed to be. As far as I could tell Sarge’s word was law, buts he mostly left the women of the unit to sort their own problems, especially the younger ones. I didn’t really feel comfortable enough in my position yet to boss anyone around. Sex though, I was getting the hang of that.   

In the days that followed I finally worked through the rest of the unit. I bedded Mica and then Luca. Mica was indeed the nice of the two, although I found Luca to be more skilled with her tongue. Stella and Cali took their night with me together. Cali, for all her rough appearance proved to be as gentle and affectionate as her lover. I got to Jen last.  She was a much friendlier person in bed than she was the rest of the time.

...

The first bombardment came a week after we arrived in the trenches and caught us all by surprise. Nearly everyone was in the mess, eating when we heard the first crashing explosion against the electric shield.

Lieutenant Bernard was on his feet in an instant. “Everyone get to shelter point one!”

We all knew the routine and almost as one bolted for the dorm across the courtyard. The women’s dorm was the most solid structure in the trench and it was where we’d wait out an orbital bombardment like this one. God help the poor souls caught out alone on watch near the trench lines. Their only hope was to make a run for the dorm or dig in where they were.

I reached the safety of the hillside structure as fire fell from the sky and cut through the brilliant flickering blue light of the shield. The falling star of light hit the far side of the trench and the earth shook. I stumbled and fell into the dorm.

Fear tore at my stomach like a trapped animal, someone pulled me to my feet and I found myself looking up at Sarge in the flickering lights of the dorm. She already had her pulse rifle over her shoulder.

She pulled me against her as I started to shake uncontrollably.

“Breath,” She stroked my hair and I rested my head against her chest, hearing the frantic beat of her heart.

“Breath Kate, you have to hold it together. I need you to calm down the newbies of the unit. Can you do that for me?”

I felt a wave of calm slowly sink into me and I looked up and nodded. She kissed me on the forehead, “All right, go do your job Private Kaylan.”

She pushed me away gently and looked out into the dim room lit only by a spirit lamp. The veterans of Sixty-Second and Forty-Second were grim faced and ready, most sitting beneath the protection of the lower bunks and the limestone arches, guns clenches in their hands. The younger women and men were gathered together against the walls in small groups like frightened animals.

Jack and Joshua were already starting to move through them, speaking quietly, trying to calm them. Before I could move another explosion shook the dust down from the dirt roof. Distantly I heard Lieutenant Bernard yelling for everyone to stay calm, that the shield was holding. We had to stay in the shelter and be ready.

I went to the women in my unit. Ash was sitting on the floor with her hands over her head and eyes closed, trembling as I had been less than a moment before. I sat beside her, hugging her body against my own. She opened her eyes and clasped my hand.

Her trembling lessoned. I told her to breath and she did. I looked up and saw my unit scattered around the room. I motioned towards the younger ones and with nervous looks they came over to me and Ash where we were on the floor. I got them all down into a sort of huddle where I could reach out and touch or clasp hands with as many as I could.

“We’re together, we’re alive, we’ll get through this.” I promise them. Millie had her face buried in Sarah’s shoulder, Alex’s eyes were as wide as a kicked cats and even Sam was taking slow shallow breaths. Hallie had her eyes closed and was utterly still.

We all clutched at each other as if touch and human warmth could lessen the crushing fear of death. The earth shook again and then Jack’s voice rose, strong and slightly off key above the chaos. He was singing, a song about safety and home and I found myself raising my own voice to join him.

_Hearth and fire_

_Stone and coal_

_Deep within the night_

_Is the star of home_

We sang, all of us, even the veterans as the world trembled and the walls shook and we couldn’t even hear our own voices.

The bombardment lasted less than a half hour, but it felt like an eternity. When the explosions stopped we waited, tense and ready, riffles in our hands expecting to hear the distant rumbled of tanks or out alarms blare but no charge ever came.

The shields held and after another half hour a loud signal blared through our trench and all the other’s along the line. We had the all clear. Lieutenant Bernard would later tell us that what had happened was the Varcian’s were able to briefly figure out the constantly changing shield frequencies. They launched smart missiles that could counter the shield frequency and pass through it, but didn’t actually disrupt the shield itself.

Sometimes they’d try to get through the shield or even disrupt it on the group level with an earth side attack when they did this but the command center must have managed to randomize the shield fast enough this time that the Varcian’s didn’t want to risk it and just settled for blowing the hell out of us.

That night we crept out of the women’s dorm and found most of our camp intact, except unfortunately for the mess hall that was a smoking ruin. Our camps smaller shield had engaged and then been overloaded by the missiles. It hadn’t been hit but smoke was issuing from the shield house, which meant fried circuits and possibly ruined motherboards. We sent Nix in with a wrench and some extra parts and she promised to have it operational by sunset the next day.

We checked all the trench line and aside from a few large craters most of it was intact. The officers decided that we could wait until the next day to start repairs, doubled the watch and told everyone else to go to bed.

I walked back to the dorm on shaky feet. I’d just slumped onto my bed when Ash slipped in and joined me. I welcomed her into my arms. Sarah and Millie poked their heads in a minute later and noticed that Ash had beat them there

“Can we sleep with you?”

“Sure, if you don’t mind sharing the bed with Ash too”

Alex came a minute later, then Sam. Hallie looked into the room, see to decide it was too crowded and slipped away, even though I tried to call her back. I wouldn’t have thought that my bed could hold six women but with a certain amount of adjustment we managed. I thought we’d just sleep but that wasn’t the way things went.

Alex of course started things. She managed to wiggle past Sarah and Millie to get against my back. She slipped her arms around me from behind and then her fingers started to wander.

Ash, in whose arms I was lying, certainly noticed this. She tensed for a moment and I wasn’t certain what she was going to do.

Then she pulled me closer and kissed me hungrily. Things went a pretty predictable if complicated direction after that. Trapped between Ash and Alex, I wasn’t too aware of what else was going on in the bed but I’m pretty sure Millie, Sarah and Sam ended up in some complicated tangle. That wasn’t really anything new for them, I knew that Sarah and Millie had invited Sam into their bed before.

At some point our two tangles melded and I was not completely sure who I was touching or who was touching me. I just knew that it all felt good and I needed it desperately. We were alive and we needed to prove it.

I woke the next morning once again in Ash’s arms. She was awake although the rest of our bedmates were still dozing. She was watching me with those pretty blue eyes of hers.

I knew what that the soft aching look in her eyes meant. It broke my heart because I knew that if I let myself, I’d return that look soon enough and that was a very, very bad idea.

“Hey beautiful,” she said softly.

“Hey yourself.”

“Can I kiss you?”

“You know you don’t have to ask.”

“I just like hearing you say yes.”

“Yes.”

And she kissed me, slow and sweet and full of need. Very gently, so as not to wake the others, she stretched over me, deepening the kiss and running her hands over me reverently.

I parted my legs for her and she took the invitation. She slid two fingers into my still slick body. I arched against her, moving against her with every thrust of her strong fingers. She straddled my thigh and I knew every movement of mine, drove my leg against her center.

Her eyes were closed, her breath short as we worked each other towards completion. She came first and I watched her arch her back with release as my own orgasm caught me and washed me up against the rocks of forgetful pleasure. If I could have just held on to that moment for forever I could have been content.

…

By the time I left the dorm for the new temporary mess in one of the abandoned dorms repairs for the walls were well underway. I ate rehydrated porridge heated on a camp stove and then went to see if I could be useful.

I followed a line of soldiers across came to edge of camp where a grizzly sight awaited me. A shell had hit in the middle of the field of white crosses. There were bits of white wood and well, other things that should have stayed in the earth, scattered everywhere.

I felt sick and ducked out of sight to throw up the re-hydrated porridge. At least it was too cold for anything to smell. Joshua was standing at the edge of the field, grim faced directing the soldiers to dig a large hole. I guess he meant to put all the bones and… other things…in a mass grave. It wasn’t like we could figure out what parts belongs to which bodies and put them back in their proper graves.

I took up my shovel and went to help with the hole. The digging was the easy part. I dug and dug until my hands blistered and the blisters bled. When we hit bedrock Joshua called a halt. I put on gloves and tied a mint soaked cloth over my mouth and nose. Then I helped move the bodies. We quickly found that the easiest thing to do was lay down tarps and then pile bones and parts onto them and then move the tarps.

I tried very, very hard not to think about what I was touching but it was almost impossible. I hoped that if I died in the trenches my own bones would never so terrify a young soldier.

It took all morning and even after we began to fill in the grave we were still turning up bits of white bone or scraps of uniforms. It was cold and yet the sweet sickly smell of earth bound rot clung to everything. When the earth was packed down we laid the few unbroken double crosses all together on top of the mound.

Joshua fished a common prayer book from some pocket of his coat and read three different prayers for the dead. I’d never been to a funeral before so I had no idea if that was what was normally done.

We all walked back to camp together and I went straight to the tap and scrubbed and scrubbed my blistered hands.

The rest of the day was spent re-enforcing the damaged trench walls. I was beyond tired by the time the sun set. I ate with the unit and slumped back towards my room. I had just sat down on the edge of my bunk and begun tugging my boots off when I heard a knock on the wall.

Without looking up I said, “I’m exhausted. If you want to share my bed for the warmth and the company you can, but I’m going to sleep.”

Sarge’s chuckle was warm, “You’ve certainly gotten bold private, refusing your sergeant.”

I looked up, “Sorry Sarge. I thought you were one of the others. Did you want a word?”

She shook her head and sat down on the edge of the bed, “No, it’s just my night.”

I’d forgotten. I set down the boot that I had yanked off, “You know I don’t think we have to pretend anymore. The unit knows were not tumbling.”

“You don’t want me here?” she said it very softly.

“What? No, I mean I like talking to you. You know you’re welcome.”

She’d been sharing my bed once a week, as an officer was due, since we came to Io, even if it was just to talk and sleep on her own side of the bed. I hadn’t minded, I liked her company and needed the rest. Truth be told I’d have happily bedded her as I had the rest of the unit but she’d never touched me like that. I couldn’t quite understand it because I often saw the flicker of desire in her eyes but she never acted on it. I guess her marriage vows meant something to her.

I studied her face. She looked as tired as I felt. I also noticed that she had something in her hand, a paper envelope. I scooted closer to her and she gave my shoulder a brief friendly squeeze. Then she passed me the envelope.

I tipped the contents into my hand and a paper letter and a picture fell out. I held up the picture. It was of a dark haired woman holding a tiny pink infant. The baby had her big brown eyes open and not particularly focused. Her tiny mouth opened in a yawn. They were both in what was probably a hospital bed, ugly yellow sheets pooled around them.

“You’re a mother.”

“Yea, I’ve been one for a month’s time now, the letter took that long to get here. It came with the last load of mail before the attack.”

“She’s beautiful.”

“Yea, even if she does kinds of look like a pink roll of dough. Mary named her Alexandra for her own mother.”

I passed her back the photo. “You should have told the unit, that moonshine Sam brewing is almost ready, we could toast the baby.”

She accepted the letter and pictures back, carefully tucking both back into the envelope. “When this is all done I suppose I will.”

She sounded very tired and a little bit lonely. It couldn’t be easy to have a wife and new baby so far away.

I pushed back the covers on the bed. I thought I knew what she needed. I waited until she’d kicked off her own boots and slipped beneath the covers on her own side of the bed before I spoke.

“Could you hold me?” I asked from her for what she couldn’t ask for herself.

“Come here,” her voice sounded a little rough to me, almost as if a sob had been forced down. She pulled me into her arms and I rested my head against the soft fabric of her shirt. She buried her face in my hair, taking shallow breaths.

Her arms circled my waist and her body was warm against my own. I thought she might say something more, talk about her family, but she didn’t, just held me close until I fell asleep in the warmth of her arms.


	10. Chapter 10

 

The one person I couldn’t get to know in my own generation was the oddest of the young soldiers, Mark. Unlike his scrawny and half starved slum born companions he was tall and heavily built. Even with his hair crew cut he looked like a blond Adonis not a foot soldier.

He was as out of place as a prize hunting dog among strays. He kept to himself and seldom said a word to anyone, much less me. Even when the units were training or sparring he would go off by himself and run through a routine on his own.

Eventually my curiosity got the better of me and I asked Jack and Joshua about him one day when we were in the yard watching the matches and Mark was off on his own sparring with shadows.

“Why doesn’t anyone ever spar with Mark?”

Jack shrugged, “No one wants to get hurt. Mark’s a genetically engineered super soldier, he could kick any of our asses and break a couple of bones while he’s at it. He doesn’t know how to fight with normal’s without causing damage.”

“Wait, he’s a GES?” I had heard of genetically engineered soldier but I’d never seen one. From what I knew they were specially designed clones grown in vats who were specially trained from infancy to be elite marines. They cost a small fortune to create and train and as far as I knew, were only used for super important missions. I couldn’t imagine why one would be in a normal unit.

Joshua nodded, “Yes but he’s a discontinued line. He’s the Gama Ninety Two model. There are no more units of those”

“What do you mean discontinued?”

Joshua tilted his head to look at me and then lowered his voice, “Rumor is that the military was trying to create a new line of GES that would be immune to bioweapons and smart viruses, that’s what wiped out the last gen of the Beta line. 

“You see the reason that they always going to keep use sorry unmodified grunts like us is that we’ve got diverse genetic codes and immune systems that are impossible to replicate. Any kind of biological weapon the enemy uses on us can kill their people too, even smart bugs. It is possible to create super soldiers one by one each with their own code but it’s expensive. Clone soldiers are easier to make but well they’ve all got the same immune system and all it takes is one well created smart bug to wipe them out.

The military thought they’d figured out a solution with the Gama’s. Instead of straight cloning and vat growing them they gave them all distinct mitochondrial DNA and had them carried by surrogate mother’s so that they’d inherit their surrogate mother’s immune systems.”

He paused for a moment and then lowered his voice even further, “I’ve heard rumors that they’ve been using girls from the state run orphanage system as the surrogates. Kate, you’re probably luck you didn’t end up in one of the baby farms.”

I thought of some of the older girls that the military had taken and never said where they were going. I thought they were meant to be soldiers, now I knew they weren’t. If I’d been healthier and had a less pleasing face,  would I have ended up somewhere else? Would it be worse to be bearing children that I couldn’t keep or to shiver with a unit in the trenches? I would have taken my own fate a thousand fold a thousand fold over the alternative. No matter how many years I lived, I would never forgot the raw heart wrenching pain I saw on my mother's face the day she was forced to abandon me.

Joshua kept talking, “Anyway I guess they didn’t get the Gammas right. As soon as they sent out the first wave of the new units the Varcians managed to capture one and study him enough to figure out a way to create a smart virus that would kill them as well as the last batch of our GES’s. They whipped out all of them on Io and Kepler and Helen too.”

“The only reason that Mark is still alive is that he was a second generation Gama and still in training when all of the first gen died. The second generation of Gammas were obsolete before they were ever deployed. The military couldn’t use them as units because the Varcians could wipe them all out with their new smart virus.

“Instead of euthanizing them, they just separated all of them into normal units. The thought was that the enemy won’t waist the smart virus to kill just one man and if they did, the units would only lose one member. Last year nearly all the male units got a Gamma.”

I watched Mark at the edge of the yard working quickly and brutally through a training routine, kicking and punching at the air. He moved with the precision of a machine and no emotion on his face.

“Wait, why’d the Sixty-Second get one? I never heard of a GES being gay.”

Jack shrugged where he was sitting . “I’m not sure GES even have sex drives much less orientations.”

Joshua gave him a tired look, “You don’t know that one way or the other.”

"You ever fuck him?"

He shrugged, "No. When he was first transferred, I put him on the roster. He asked if he had to sleep with me and I told him it was his choice. He's never showed up for any of his nights. I honestly don't know if he's not interested in me, or men in general. He’s never shown any interest in anyone in his own unit or in the Fifty-Eighth for that matter." 

Jack shrugged, “It doesn’t really matter though, it’s not like Mark’s making friends in his unit much less anything else. He barely even talks. Poor guy probably spent his whole life in a unit of essentially his clone brothers, he can’t even tie his shoes without someone ordering him to do it. He’s not adjusting so well to being in a normal unit.

“He’s still human right, same number of chromosomes as us and all. Maybe he just doesn’t know how to interact with strangers,” I said.

“Feel free to try to talk to him. He’ll just answer your question with yes or no and look at you funny,” piped up Jack.

…

I did try, if just to prove Jack wrong if nothing else. The next time I saw Mark sitting along in the mess near the end of a meal I went over and sat across from him.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hello,” he said not looking up from his food. 

“My name is Kate.”

“I am a GES of the Gama line, designation number 987045 previously of unit 2034. My current lieutenant has since insisted I have a human name and given me the designation of Mark Smith.” 

He said this all without blinking. I had no idea what to say.

“Why Mark?”

“He said it was his nephew’s name.”

“Um, do you like the food tonight? I helped cook.” Not that it was any less terrible for my involvement. There was only so much that could be done for re-hydrated food.

“It’s adequate,” he said sounding confused. “You and those you cooked with successfully re-hydrated and cooked the rations.”

I got the odd feeling that he was trying to be polite although he didn’t have a very good concept of what polite was. Maybe the military didn’t teach GES’s casual conversation.

“Thank you,” I said not knowing what else to say.

That also confused him, “Why would you thank me?”

“You said my cooking was adequate.”

He blinked, “I do not understand.”

“You complimented me and so I thanked you for the compliment.”

He frowned, “But I was not complimenting you, merely stating the truth. The cooking was adequate.”

And that was kind of how the conversation went. I might have lived most of my life in institutions but at least I knew how to carry on conversations, this guy, not so much. He clearly took most things a little too literally.

Eventually I said I had to go and made my escape. I still didn’t know what to make of him. About a day later he saw me carrying a heavy box of rations from the shed to the mess hall. The box was probably a two person job and I supposed I could have gone looking for someone to help me but I just wanted to get it done and the girl from Fifty-Eight who was supposed to do the shift with me was late.

As I stumbled through the yard with the box in my arms, I was startled when someone snatched it out of my arms.

“This is too heavy for you,” Mark told me as he carried it for me into mess hall. “You should not be carrying more than a third or your weight and this is heavier.”

I had to hurry to keep up with him. He set it down on the counter.

“What else requires carrying?”

“You don’t have to.”

“I want to be useful.”

“Then could you bring me two more boxes of concentrated soup?”

He nodded and left. He came back with the boxes and set them down on the counter with the others.

“Thank you,” I told him and he nodded and left without a word. I was a little confused but grateful enough for the help.

Over the next months he often offered to carry things for me but seldom said much else and I sensed that I was missing something although I did not know what.

….

I might not have put more thought to the matter but less than a week later a new soldier was added to our unit. That alone was something strange enough since we were a full complement.

She came on the supply transport from the base and she could have been Mark’s twin. She was tall and golden haired with a generic military crew cut. Her eyes were a sharp blue and she had a special sniper rifle over her shoulder. She was built like she could stop a tank, without actually seeming over muscled. I knew she was a GES without asking.

I was the courtyard when she stepped off the shuttle and headed towards the command center, ie technology shed. I didn’t even notice Jack was beside me until he nudged me.

“You should close your mouth, flies will get in.”

I elbowed him back and leaned back against the dining hall wall, “There are no flies. Also I bet you’re looking too. Was she a female GES?”

“Yea she looked just like the one on the news feeds. Damn if I know what’s she’s doing here. I thought they were just growing them to serve as sharp shooters for the male GES units.”

“I haven’t heard of that, why are they using women for sharpshooters?”

Jack shrugged, “They say they make better ones than men. I don’t know if it’s true or not but the military used it as an excuse when they first started making female GES. Of course the real truth, or what I’ve heard is that they’re trying to create a breeding program, using sperm and eggs from GES’s and then having them carried by surrogates. The thought is that the bred GES should be genetically diverse enough to be immune to smart viruses, we won’t know if it works for about sixteen years though.”

“How the hell have you heard all of that? Shouldn’t it be classified?” not that any of the military’s GES programs ever managed to be for long.

“Bobby told me, back when he was in academy his training unit shared facilities with a Gamma male GES unit and a really small dorm of female ones. Now none of them talked with the normal soldiers but, one of the medics who took care of them was Bobby’s friend and liked to gossip.”

He might have said more but Sergeant White came out of the command center/map shed with the woman.

She motioned me over, 

I hurried over and saluted.

“Private Kepler, this is Private Jess. She’ll be joining our unit as a sharpshooter. I would like you to show her around and help her settle in.”

“Yes Ma’am.”

Sarge nodded and went back into the office. I was there standing with Jess. She looked more bored than expectant. 

I held out my hand, “Welcome to the Forty-Second, my names Kate. I’m the unit companion.” 

She accepted my hand and shook it like she understood the idea of the gesture but had never done it before. “I am a GES of the Gama line, designation number 887045 previously of unit 2032. Your sergeant suggested that your unit might be more comfortable if I chose a name, so you may call me Jess.”

“Nice to meet you. Come one, I’ll show you the dorm.”

She followed me as I led her to the dorm, pausing by the storeroom to pick her up some bedding. I talked as we went explaining the basic setup of the fort. I introduced her to soldiers as we passed and she got better at hand shaking. 

Jack fell in with us when we came into the dorm, clearly very curious about her. We found her a bunk in the dorm with the rest of my unit and she set down her pack. I helped her open up the bedding packet and lay it all out. She sat down the edge of her bunk frowned as she looked around the small room.

“Why are there blankets hung in front of most of the bed alcoves?”

“For privacy,” I told her.

“Should I hang one?”

“Only if you want to.”

She seemed uncertain, almost hesitant. For all her height and strength she looked lost. I don’t think she’d ever had to decide much before, much less whether she wanted to take an action. “Do you hang one?”

I smiled, “well, I’ve actually got my own room,” I motioned back towards my room at the back of the dorm. “All of the companions do.”

She frowned again, “Why?” 

Jack laughed and leaned against the wall beside her bunk, “So that she can service her unit in private.”

“Service?” she sounded baffled.

“Fuck,” supplied Jack smiling playfully. “you do know what that is right?”

“Yes,” she said hesitantly.

Jack leaned into her alcove, “Ever done it?”

She actually blushed.

“Jack!” I snapped and yanked him backwards by the collar of his coat, “Stop being a jerk.”

He wriggled out of my gasp, “I’m just curious.”

I glared at him, “It’s none of your business. Now go away and stop bothering us.”

He rolled his eyes and left. I watched him go and then turned back to Jess, “Sorry about that, he doesn’t really mean to be that rude, he’s just very nosy.”

She looked at me like I’d just spoken Greek.

“Why don’t I show you the rest of the trenches?” I offered.

We spent the rest of the afternoon walking the trenches. I managed to introduce her to everyone. Most of the Sixty-Second didn’t take much interest in her, other then their own sharp shooter, a lean red haired soldier named Frank, who spent a good half hour talking about sniper rifles with Jess. He seemed impressed that she could list of the specs of any make or module he could name.

I would have thought that she and Mark would be friends, since they were both GES’s and Gammas but after a brief formal greeting they seemed to have nothing more to say to each other.

My unit on the other hand were all madly in lust with her. Alex flirted shamelessly and so did most of the others. Sadly for them, it all seemed to go over Jess’s head. She seemed kind of overwhelmed by the attention.

At dinner all of the younger members of our unit crowded around the table asking her questions, most of which she answered with one or two words. I had to tell them to knock it off so that she could eat. I walked her back to the dorm so that they wouldn’t hound her.

She headed for her bunk as soon as we entered the cold room. “Do you need anything else?” I asked her.

“Could you show me how to hang up a blanket?”

“Of course.”

I found her one of the extra ones and we hung up a string, clipped the blanket to it and she had some privacy for the first time in her life.

I went back to my room and was combing my hair before bed when I heard something like a commotion in the dorm. I had just set down my comb and stood to go see what was going on when Jess came stumbling through the curtain as if pushed. She was barefoot, wearing nothing more than a white shirt and a pair of shorts.

We stood blinking uncertainly for a moment. She crossed her arms and looked at the floor, “They said I’m supposed to have sex with you.”

I looked at my own feet, “That’s just tradition; a new soldier always spends their first night in the unit with the companion. You don’t have too if you don’t want to though.”

She bit at her lip and glanced back towards the curtain, “I think I’d rather not go back out there.”

I was going to have a very harsh talk with my unit and probably Jack as well in the morning.

“I understand. You can share my bed. I promise I won’t try anything?”

She sat down on the edge of the bed her head tilted to the side, “Try anything?”

“Um,” so much for slang, “I won’t initiate anything sexual unless you want me to.”

“Oh,” she sounded almost disappointed.

I sat down next to her, “I mean are you even attracted to women?” I had no idea if GES orientations varied the way normal people did. Maybe they were all straight or even asexual.

She blushed. “When I was tested, the medic said I was bisexual. Most of the GL345 clones from my batch are. I believe this may be why I was place in the Forty-Second.”

That came as something of a surprise, “You do like women then?”

“Yes, although I have never had sexual relations with either gender before.”

I patted her shoulder, “There’s nothing wrong with being a virgin. If you’ve got any questions about sex I’d be happy to answer them.” 

“You would not prefer to show me?” she looked at me with hopeful blue eyes, the color of the skies in old Terran photos.

Now it was my turn to blush, “You want me?”

She smiled weakly, the first smile I’d ever seen on her attractive, perfectly symmetrical face, “Yes…if you do not mind sleeping with a virgin.”

I turned towards her, gently stroking the side of her face, “I would be honored to be your first lover.”

Awkwardly she reached for me, placing her hands on my shoulders like she didn’t know how to touch a woman, which I guess she didn’t. 

I tilted my face up and pressed my lips against hers. She froze and then after a moment began to kiss me back. We kissed for a long time until we were both breathless. I threw one leg over hers and crawled into her lap. 

She pulled me against herself. I slipped my hands under her shirt and ran my fingers across her warm skin, up over her back, around to trace just beneath her slight breasts. She couldn’t have more than a very low percentage percent body fat. I could feel the solid muscle under my fingers, like stone beneath silk.

She broke the kiss to gasp when I brought my hands up to caress an aching nipple. 

“Raise your arms,” I told her and she did. 

I tugged her shirt off and then quickly shed my own. She looked at me with awe and hesitantly cupped one of my small breasts in the palm of her hand, tweaking the nipple between her fingers, just as I had done to her a moment before.

“They’re softer than mine.” 

I decided to take that as a compliment. 

She ran her hands lower and looked back up into my eyes. “Can I see the rest of you too?”

“Of course,” I slipped from her lap and stood up, kicking off my sweat pants. She leaned back against the bed, raw hunger warring with awe on her face.

“Never seen a naked woman before?” I teased her gently.

“Never one who wasn’t my clone. This is…this is very different.”

“So what do you think?” I tried not to sound vulnerable.

“You’re beautiful,” she said it with such innocence that she made my heart ache. 

I moved back onto the bed, straddling her again. I kissed her, touching her breasts and stomach as she touched me. I ducked down my head to suck on a breast and she began to almost tremble beneath me.

I tugged insistently at her shorts and she raised her hips to help me push them down.

I pressed my fingers between her legs and found her wet. She gasped and bucked against me when I rubbed my fingers against her clit.

“That feels…” she didn’t manage to finish that sentence as a moan was torn from her throat.

I kissed a line down her stomach and nudged her legs wider, replacing my fingers with my lips. I had to press down on her hips to keep her in place. I could hear her hands scrambling at the bedcovers. 

She made small desperate sounds and then cried out as she came remarkably quickly. I kept working my tongue against her clit, figuring that if could orgasm that quick once she could probably do it again.

When I pressed a finger against her entrance she was slick and warm. My finger slid into her easily and I added a second curling them inside of her even as I kept sucking at her clit. She moaned and cried out again, clenching in orgasm again a moment later.

I drew back, kissing her stomach before I stretched out beside her. She was beautifully flushed, her eyes closed and her lips parted as she fought for breath. I rested my head on her shoulder as she found her way back from the haze of pleasure.

When her eyes blinked open there was still hunger in them. She rolled on top of me, kissing me with more fever than skill. I parted my legs for her when she reached between them.

She didn’t find my clit as easily as I had hers. I covered her hand with my own and guided her, “lower, just a bit. There you go. Easy, not so hard. Ooh.”

She was a bit rough, but gods it felt good. I arched against her. I almost cried in protest when she abandoned my clit of move lower. She lay back on an elbow so she could balance a bit better and carefully nudged two fingers against my entrance.

“go on,” I urged her and she pressed them into me.

Her eyes went wide as she penetrated my body, “You’re so warm,” she murmured. Then to my disappointment, she didn’t do anything.

“Move your hand, curl your fingers,” I whispered and she did, if a bit more roughly than I would have liked. 

“Easy, not so hard,” 

She slowed, easing into gentle long strokes, curling her fingers inside of me with each movement. That felt really, really good.

Her fingers were long and she had the strength of a woman who worked with her hands every day. She leaned over me, kissing me again as she worked my body. I could feel the ache of pleasure coiling inside of me, getting closer and closer. I couldn’t come just from what she was doing though.

I reached down and found my own clit, rubbing it quickly to bring myself over the edge. I came with a soft sound and clenched around her fingers. She didn’t stop moving her fingers though. I thought I could come again.

“Now, you can do it harder, I want your mouth on my breast too,” I had never really had a talent for sounding sexy in bed. I could say what I wanted but not make it sound like much more than orders, not that any of my bed mates had ever complained.

She pressed her fingers into me quicker and rougher, so that it almost hurt but in a good way. When she brought her warm lips to my left breast I arched against her. She wasn’t careful enough with her teeth and I felt them scrape against the delicate nipple but I was beyond caring. I found my own clit again and quickly worked it.

I arched against her with a desperate moan and felt a second orgasm spark through me. When it faded I said,“enough.”

I gently pushed her face away from my chest and she eased her fingers from me. I slumped back against the bed, resting my head on her shoulder as I fought for breath.

She lay beside me, gently stroking my hair.

I was half asleep when she asked, “Did I do it right?” she asked softly.

“Wonderfully,” I murmured.

“But you touched yourself at the same time,”

I opened my eyes sleepily, “Sometimes really good sex takes three hands and no woman’s got more than two.”

That just confused her.

I leaned over and kissed her lightly on the lips, “You were good trust me. In fact, I think you’ve taken to sex quiet well for a recent virgin.”

She blushed in spite of everything we’d just been doing, “I have long been curious but never had the opportunity. I was raised among a crèche of my clones and sexual relations are discouraged even among non related GES soldiers. We are socialized to consider it unnecessary.”

“Unnecessary?”

“Yes and potentially disruptive to a GES unit. We are told to never act on our attractions.”

I wasn’t sure what to think, even in the haze of post orgasmic glow, “we sure as hell just did.”

She shook her head, “I am no longer in a GES unit. When I was assigned to non-modified unit I was told that I must learn to behave in a way that basic soldiers would consider normal. I was advised that sexual behavior is considered normal and I should consider having relations with the unit companion in order to better understand human interactions.”

I pulled away from her, feeling a little cold. “You slept with me because your superiors ordered you to learn about human interactions?”

She looked confused again, “it was not a direct order, merely an advised course of action. I chose to follow it. Have I insulted you?”

I tucked the blanket around me, “No, I just didn’t think you were only doing your duty.”

She looked at me with those almost innocent eyes of hers, “I do not understand. Duty is a bad thing? You were doing your duty as unit companion in having sex with me, were you not?”

“Yes, I did want to though. You know you’re incredibly hot.”

“Hot?”

“Sexy.”

“Oh, well you are too.”

And just like that the tension broke between us.

“Can we do it again?” she asked hopefully.

“Hell yes.”

…

Over the next few days she adjusted very quickly to the unit. She was never much for talking but she was friendly enough. 

It may have helped that most of my unit really would have liked to bed her. Most of the Fifty-Eight and Sixty-Second may have shared similar sentiments about Mark, but he was off-putting enough that most had given up flirting pretty quickly. 

I was amazed by how much better Jess was with people than Mark. She never really flirted back with anyone but she was polite enough and sometimes did smile.

I saw her with Mark often enough, especially in the practice yard. Watching them spar was a thing of beauty, a strange savage mix of animal violence and dancer’s grace. Mark usually won their matches but they both seemed to enjoy them.

On her fifth afternoon after watching her and Mark spar, I found myself half overwhelmed with desire for her. I invited her back to my room to the cat calls of our unit. She followed, slightly baffled.

“I thought we didn’t have another night for two weeks?”

I tugged her through the curtain, “key word being night, I do what I want with my afternoons. My unit understands.” At least they would if I didn’t make a habit of it or do it enough to show too much favoritism. 

Things went pretty predictably after that. She might not be experienced but she was one hell of a quick learner. When we finished we lay together, cooling down. She ran her fingers over me lazily as if trying to memorize every curve of my body.

“I never realized a grown woman could be so small until I met you.”

I looked up at her, “small?” we were going to have to work on her compliments.

“You’re half my size.” She folded one my hands between her own. “slighter than anyone else in your unit too.”

“Well I’m slum born and you’re a super soldier.”

She kissed our joined hands, “I didn’t mean it was a bad thing. I like the way you look, I’m more attracted to you than any woman I’ve ever met before.”

“Hmm, I’ll take that as a compliment, even if I doubt you’ve ever actually seen that many women.”

“I was raised almost entirely with my own clones and had limited contact with other GES models. The units here are some of the first non enhanced humans I’ve ever met who weren’t doctors or teachers.”

“You’ve been adjusting well.”

She nodded, “Yes, I was socialized to be able to integrate into new units. My model female B745’s are trained in crèches of our clones but placed as sharp shooters with male BES units of many different lines, at least we were before all of the Gamma’s became obsolete. I even had some training in working with non modified soldiers, since I might also be expected to run missions with such.”

So much for pillow talk. I considered what she’s said though, “So that’s why you’re getting on with the others better than Mark.”

“Yes, Male B745 are only socialized to interact with other B745’s. He was not trained to have the social skills necessary to interact with non clones, much less a non modified unit. I have been trying to help him learn the necessary socialization but I was never trained to be a teacher.”

It was a little weird listening to her talk about herself and Mark that technically. It took me a second to take it all in, “Wait, you and Mark are both B745’s?”

“We are male and female variations of the same model, we share all DNA except I have XX chromosomes and he has XY.”

That explained why they looked like twins. It was hard to believe that the same set of DNA could lead to such different personalities. 


	11. Chapter 11

Even with the distraction of Jess joining the unit, everyone was still on tenterhooks waiting for the next bombardment. We never rebuilt the mess hall either. We didn’t have enough raw materials, especially after making all the other necessary repairs to the trenches. We started using one of the empty barracks instead. We’d already been using it to store the food supplies anyway. It was darker and colder but it worked.

The veterans were grimmer and the younger soldiers nervous as cats. The one thing that lightened the next month was a mystery I ended up solving. It began with Jack asking me one afternoon as we were re-cataloging the medical supplies in the new mess hall between meals with Joshua. We had everything laid out on broken up crates set out on bricks. We didn’t have real tables or chairs anymore.

When Joshua went to get a crate from the storage shed Jake leaned over and said, “Hey Kate, you haven’t noticed if any of the women in your unit have been slinking off at night have you?”

I shrugged, “If they are I’d be the last to know. I’m usually pretty busy in my own room.”

Jack frowned and looked down at the bandages he was counting, “Fair enough but do you think anyone in your unit is fucking outside your unit?”

“Yea, a few have been messing around with your unit. You know that though. No one’s exactly subtle about it and curtains don’t hide sound. Stella and Cali had Liz in their alcove last night, I saw her leaving it this morning.”

A few of the women in Jack’s unit were bisexual to some degree or just stressed and horny enough to branch out for the sake of getting off. They usually just messed around with each other but I’d stumbled over a few random fucks going on between members of Jack’s and my unit, most involving Alex.

Some of the files of the women in my unit suggested they might be mildly bisexual but still predominantly attracted to women. Even if they were interested in the opposite sex it was not like that they’d have had much chance to act on those desires if they had them. Jack’s unit was sure as hell not sharing him.

Jack’s frown deepened, “I know about Alex, and I’m damn sure Cooper would never fuck her.”

“Then what are you asking?” I said in exacerbation.

His shoulders slumped, “I think Sergeant Cooper if fucking someone and it’s not a member of my unit. She she’s been acting different, a little distracted and distant. She actually just went to sleep the last time she had a night with me.”

“Maybe she’s just tired or didn’t feel like fucking you.”

He scowled, “She’s never not wanted me before. She always wants me to at least get her off, no matter how tired she is, because she has a week before she gets me again.”

“Maybe Nix gave her one of her devices,” I said with a laugh. Nix had made a couple extras she’d shared with the unit.

“Nix gave her one of those a month ago and she still wanted me. I’m sure she’s fucking someone else.”

“She’s free to fuck who she wants Jack, same as anyone in this trench but us.”

He looked away, “I don’t care if she’s fucking someone else. It just bugs me that she’s keeping it secret. I mean especially since I don’t think it’s one of the women, she’s told me herself that she’s only interested in men.”

That caught my attention, “You think she’s fucking one of the Sixty-Second?”

Jack shrugged, “It’s the only thing that makes sense. It would explain why she’s leaving the barracks at night.”

I was a little surprised. That really hadn’t happened before. None of the Sixty-Second had shown any interest in fucking anyone in the Forty-Second or the Fifty-Eighth as far as I knew. Then again I wasn’t exactly keeping track of everyone’s liaisons. I supposed that their unit could have some members who were bisexual like Jack's unit.

“Is this getting under your skin? It’s never bothered you before when women in your unit have slept with each other or the women in mine. Does thinking it might be a man make it that different?”

He grimaced and pushed away the bandages, clearly giving up on counting, “Is it bad if I do? I kind of enjoyed being the only heterosexual male around.”

“I’m pretty sure you still are.”

“You know what I mean. And this isn’t just any woman from my unit, it’s Cooper, she’s my sergeant. We’ve been fucking once a week for a year. I know I’ve been the only choice she’s had when she wanted to fuck but…I don’t know I thought she at least liked me. Hell I know I’m the unit companion, but I’d like to think I was a little bit more than just a warm body to her.”

“If a warm body is all that you are to your unit you’re doing your job wrong,” said Joshua dropping a crate beside the table.

Jack and I both half jumped out of our skins. We’d been so busy talking we hadn’t heard him come back in.

“You got trouble in your unit?” Joshua asked.

“I think Sergeant Copper if fucking someone in yours, hell if I know who,” said Jack.

Joshua blinked, “Seriously?”

Jack nodded solemnly.

Joshua shrugged and began to dump medical supplies onto the table and note them on his tablet, “well if she is it’s her business, you know that.”

“But I’m the unit companion. I should know everything.”

“No you should know everything in your units files, see everything that happens in front of you, remember everything they say and do your best to take care of them emotionally. That doesn’t mean snooping.”

“That’s not fair.”

“It’s not supposed to be, it’s your job. Don’t ever make the mistake of thinking that just because your unit fucks you they're really your lovers. They’re not.”

His words made something go cold inside of me. They upset Jack too. He stood up sharply, “Well to hell with you old man.” He turned and stormed from the barracks.

Joshua watched his back. When he was gone he gave a tired breath and leaned back in his chair, “And I am not fucking old. He’s just too damn young to have any sense yet.”

“Joshua,” I said quietly, “If our units aren’t our lovers, then who the hell do we have? We take care of them but who takes care of us?”

His face softened, “Hell if I know, ourselves I guess.”

…

I walked back to my dorm after finishing the inventory. I was tired and just wanted to rest but when I pushed open my curtain I found Jess sitting on my bed patiently waiting. I deep sense of exhaustion washed over me.

“Jess, I really don’t have the energy to give you an extra session right now, your next is in five days.”

She bit her lip and looked down the way she did when she was nervous. It was odd since I’d seen Mark do exactly the same thing. “I thought you said I could come by anytime if I needed help adjusting to the unit and socializing.”

A stab of guilt hit me. I had said that and she’d never really taken advantage of it before. What had it cost her to come and ask help and I’d almost tufted her out. I sat down on the edge of the bed, “Yes I did. I’ve got a moment, go ahead I’m listening.”

She brightened up, her face returning to a nervous smile, “A while ago you said I should think about finding a lover in the unit if I wanted to have sex more often, since you couldn’t keep giving me extra time.”

“I did. It would be good for your socialization to pursue other relationships, sexual or romantic, if that’s something you want. Are you considering someone?”

She bit her lip again. She really was nervous, “A couple women have asked me. I think I mostly want to explore sex, but I am not averse to forming a relationship. Although, I am not entirely clear how romantic relationships differ from those of friendship, I am willing to learn.”

I was actually kind of surprised the entire unit hadn’t. About the only woman in my unit not looking longingly after her was Sarge and even she cast the occasional appreciative glance.

“Alex is attractive and keeps making sexual advances but she’s so blunt she makes me nervous. Stella and Cali have as well but I am only attracted to Stella and not Cali, and I do not believe that as a couple they would agree to allow me to have sexual relations with only one of them.”

Probably not, Stella and Cali had a lot of threesomes, but I’d never heard of either of them having sex without the other there.The first time Stella had had sex with me in the tent, Cali had been watching.

“Is there no one you like?”

She looked down at her hands, “Hallie, but she has never made a direct advance.”

“Has she made less direct ones?” Honestly I’d been so busy with everything else I hadn’t exactly been paying attention to how every single member of my unit acted towards Jess. I thought Hallie had been glancing after Jess like everyone else but she was a fairly reserved woman.

“She is polite and friendly, if my understanding of those concepts are correct. She has never exhibited any behavior that I have been told is characteristic of a sexual advance.”

“She’s not really a flirt. If you’re interested in her you should probably make the first move,” I caught myself when I remembered Jess’s general lack of subtlety or social graces, “Or you know just tell her you’re attracted to her and ask if she is interested in you.”

Jess looked down at her hands, “Could you tell her for me?”

"You have to do this for yourself."

“I understand.” She stood and then paused beside the bed, “Can I hug you?”

“Yes of course, you can always hug me when you want to Jess.”

She wrapped her arms around me and I felt the reassurance of her strength, then she pulled away and was gone.

It was one of my rare nights of rest. Stella and Cali always laid with me together, which meant that one of them forfeited her regular night. I curled up alone, luxuriating in the space of the bed. I woke in the middle of the night and slipped on my shoes to pad to the latrine.

When I stepped out into the night it was bitter cold. I darted across the yard to the latrine, did my business and headed back towards the barracks. I paused for a moment to look up. Higher above I saw the brilliant glimmer of distant stars and an unfamiliar moon.

I noticed the faint glow of an electric lantern shining from the tool shed, the sound of a soft moan told me that what was happening there was none of my business. I had just turned towards the barracks when I heard something else, the click of metal against metal, like a rifle against a gear strap.

I kept perfectly still and did not turn my head, holding my breath. I heard it again and then the shifting of a boot against gravel, more than one set of feet. No one should have been on patrol there.

I was unarmed, I hadn't taken my sidearm with me to the latrine. Many things came together in my head, among them the feint hope that whoever had slipped away for a late night liaison had brought their guns.

I walked towards the shed slowly, as if it was where I had always intended to go. When I pushed open the door and stepped into the dim light of the weak lantern. I heard a gasp and then a laugh.

Sergeant Cooper looked over her naked shoulder from where she was straddling an equally naked Mark on the floor, their bodies intertwined. She blinked at me in vague confusion,

"Kate? I don't know what your up to, but I'm not sharing him with you, no matter how cute you are."

I held up a finger to my lips and tilted my head towards the door. Her eyes narrowed and she crawled off of Mark.

I knelt down beside her.

"Someone is out there."

She nodded once and reached for her belt where it lay on the ground, her side arm still in its holster. She shrugged on her coat over her naked body and made a hand motion at Mark. He sat up already reaching for his pants and the rifle he had left on a hook on the wall.

"Make sounds to cover us," she whispered and ducked down to push up a weak part of the rotting wood of the wall and crawl under.

I did as she said, hitting the back of my hands against the floor and making at first low and then louder moaning sounds. I'd bedded enough women to know how loud some of them could become. Not that it really mattered; I just needed whoever was outside to think that people were still in the shed.

Mark couldn't get out through the narrow space, so he took his rifle and crept to the door crouched and ready. Somewhere outside I heard a man's scream and then rifle fire. I hit the ground. Outside there was a loud thump.

Mark burst through the door, low and fast. I heard more rifle fire and then running feet as the barracks woke up. I slowly crept to the open door and slipped out into the night just as someone brought up the blinding blaze of the floodlights.

Sergeant Cooper stood over a slumped figure in the middle of the courtyard, a bloodied knife in her hand. Red arterial blood stained her chest and stomach as well as the open coat she wore.

Two other bodies lay on the ground, one with an exploded skull from a bullet and the other a slit throat. Mark had his rifle raised, looking out into the darkness.

Men and women poured from the two barracks.

"What the fuck!" boomed Lieutenant Bernard.

Sergeant Cooper straightened up, "Four hostiles. Three down but a forth got away back towards the shield."

Bernard barked more orders and Sergeant white called for Stella and Tali to start tracking the sorry bastard. Several women ran off and came back a moment later to report that all four of the soldiers who had been on watch towards the north of the line were dead. They'd been members of the Sixty-Second and fifty-second but Sam had traded a watch shift and died with them.

All around us people exploded into activity, looking for more infiltrators, running to check the shield, rushing for the walls. I went over to Sergeant Cooper, who was telling Sergeant White and Lieutenant Bernard what had happened. From what I could hear she started the story from the point when I ran in to warn her and Mark. It wasn't like she really needed to explain why she'd been naked in the shed with Mark that much was obvious. She seemed a bit stunned or at least oblivious to the fact that she was naked and her coat was open.

When she finished Bernard clapped her hard on the shoulder.

"Good job lass, I always knew you could think quickly on your feet. If you hadn't had your knife on hand and been ready to use it we might all be dead now," he strode off to bark more orders.

White paused a moment. "You might want to button your coat."

Cooper looked down and so did White. Cooper looked up and caught her, "What? You've never seen breasts before?"

"Never one's covered in the blood of my enemies."

"Point taken, I'll go clean up."

As I started back towards the barracks Sergeant White motioned me over quietly, "I'm not asking your business Kate, but were you really outside the shed when you heard the intruder?"

"I really was on my way back from the latrine. I'm not fucking Cooper or Mark."

She clapped me on the back, "Ok, I just wanted to make sure the stories lined up."

...

In the morning Lieutenant called everyone together and told us what he thought we needed to know. The three enemies had all gotten in with some kind of device that let them make a small hole in our force field. They'd been carrying devices on them very similar to the ones we used ourselves to sometimes make small holes to pass in and out of our own force fields.

They had probably been sent to try to get to our shield shed and bring down our whole section of the shield wall. The guard was to be tripled and we were to all to stay on high alert with our weapons on hand.

That afternoon we laid our four dead comrades into the earth. I had not known the man from the Sixty-Second or the two women from the fifty-second very well but losing Sam tore into my heart. She had been the second woman I bedded in the unit.

Joshua conducted the service and kept his face blank. The dead man in his unit had been a  newer member and the loss cut him less deeply than if he'd lost one of the older soldier he'd known longer.

Jack was close to inconsolable though. He'd liked the two women of his unit who'd died and he'd never lost any before. I took his hand and stood beside him through the service. Sergeant Cooper stood at his other side, not touching but still supportive. The mystery of who she was bedding had been solved, but it clearly didn't matter to Jack anymore.

When the service was done most of the unit had to go back to their duties. Jack was a wreck desperately fighting tears. Joshua and I took him back to the barracks. Joshua gave him a flask once we had him inside his room behind the curtain in the cool shadows of the empty women's barracks.

I sat beside him on the hard mattress my heart a stone in my chest and drank with him and Joshua.

Jack quickly dissolved into sobs. "They can't be dead, they just can't. Bonnie was with me just the night before.”

Joshua laid a hand on his shoulder, "They're not immortal just because you fuck them, believe me I've learned that the hard way. That's what it is to be a companion Jack.”

"I...I can't do this," Jack shook his head sharply, "I can't keep telling these women it's all going to be okay when it's not."

"You have to. If you don't they'll lose hope and that more than anything else will kill them. It's your job to make them able to do what they have to."

"I hate this."

"I know."

"I...I'd rather be in a military brothel and at least not know what happened to the women I bedded. This pain I can't bear."

Joshua shook his head, "Yes you can, you'd be surprised what you can do. You're barely more than a boy but I think you are still man enough not to abandon your unit when they need you, now more than ever."

Jack looked at him with red-rimmed eyes, "How?"

"You keep it together because they need you to." Joshua took a deep drink from the flask and closed his eyes, "I lost half my unit less than six months ago kid. I didn't let it break me because the surviving members needed someone to comfort them. Lieutenant Bernard gives them the courage to go forward into battle but I hold them together heart and sole, remind them that they are human.”

I thought I could understood that but when I closed my own eyes all I could see was Sam, all I could feel was her hands on my body, all I could hear was her warm voice. I felt as if a piece of myself had been stripped away. What would it cost me if I lost half of my unit, all of them? how much could I lose and remain human?

"Chin up girl," said Joshua gently, "you can't let your unit see you all quiet like that tomorrow any more than Jack can let his see him cry."

I took the flask and drank "So what am I supposed to do? Forget Sam?"

"Remember her name, her face, the secrets she told you and move on. That's as much as any soldier can hope for from their unit’s companion."

"And tonight?"

"Pour out a drink and lay in a cold bed tonight. Once that is done, have one night that you will take anyone who needs to come to you to talk or be held and then begin your schedule anew with those who remain. The break keeps them from noticing their turns come sooner when the unit is smaller."

I did so that night, hanging a blue scarf from my curtain, which was my way of saying I wanted to be left alone. I seldom used it unless I was sick but everyone knew what it meant. When I was with a woman I hung a red one, so no one interrupted. Anytime I didn't hang a scarf and wasn't asleep my unit knew they were welcome to come to me to talk. That night my bed never felt emptier.

The next night the younger members of my unit who were not on watch slowly drifted in. I didn't fuck anyone but we talked and when it go late I lay curled between the warmth of Ash's arms, Hallie's familiar body curled against my back.


	12. Chapter 12

I woke a few days later to the sound of a small troop transport landing. I ran outside with the rest of the unit to watch a small planet side craft ease down onto the cracked landing pad. Lieutenant Bernard was already waiting.

The men who disembarked were fair of hair and skin and wore dark grey uniforms. At my back Joshua swore, "Delvians, why did it have to be Delvians?"

"They're our allies right?" I whispered as I watched a lean and scarred man, who was probably the Delvian's leader, talking with our Lieutenant.

"Yes, but also a bunch of stuck up pricks," he replied.

"I guess this means were going over the top soon lads," loudly announced one of the men in Joshua's unit, the one with the red hair and mustache who's name I'd never learned. "Bobby you owe me twenty credits."

"I'll pay you when we go over the top and not a damn moment sooner," replied one of his darker haired comrades.

"I won't have time to spend it then."

The older members of Joshua's unit laughed as everyone else exchanged worried glances. There were nearly thirty Delvians and they were all placed into one of the empty barracks. If there were orders to go over the top no one spoke a word of it, especially our commanders.

By noon the Delvians were helping us with the patrols and we quickly learned that they mostly spoke pretty good standard. A few even spoke Catalan. I spoke no Delvian but I was almost fluent in standard, it had been as common in the capital as Catalan. I also knew enough Varcian to swear over the radio at the Varcians whenever the need arose.

They were a tightly knit and disciplined group. They were all in their early twenties, save their commander who was older, closer in Bernard's to age. They ate with us that evening in the barracks building that had been designated the new mess hall since the last one burned down.

They kept to themselves, at least they did until that night. It was Cooper's unit that got curious first, who could blame them? They'd had no man who'd look at them twice but Jack or Mark for six months and here was a large group of healthy young men.

The sound of a harmonica and fiddle brought me out into the chill air of the courtyard. Jack was playing his fiddle and one of the Delvians had a harmonica. There was a jug of something making the rounds and pretty much everyone was dancing.

I joined the circle and accepted the jug when it reached me, I recognized it as was some of the finest rot gut that Sam had ever brewed. A few members of the Sixty-Second, at least the younger ones wandered over as well and I saw Alex and Millie among the growing crowd. When the first jug was gone a second of an unfamiliar vintage began to work its way around.

When the music picked up I danced with Alex and then one of the women in fifty-eight and even a Delvian who asked me to. The second one I danced with tried to grab my ass. I caught his hand with my thumb on the pressure point so it would hurt, Joshua had taught me how to do that.

"I don't know how things work on Delvia but on Terra Nueva we don't touch like that without an invitation and I haven't offered you one."

"Sorry ma'am," he apologized shaking out his hand.

I went to go sit down and found myself beside a drunk younger member of the Sixty-Second, a young blond named Tommy, talking with an equally drunk Delvian. The man waved about his tin cup.

"This is a fine a place as we've been since we left Delvia. You've got booze and music and women. If you only had a brothel too, this would be heaven."

"Who needs brothels? Our units all have our own companion."

The Delvian blinked, "Where? I haven't seen a whore since I got here."

"They ain't whores," slurred Tommy, "companions only take care of their own unit. They're important and special."

"So which of these girl's services your unit then? They all just look like soldiers to me."

Tommy laughed, "ain't not girl. See that tall dark haired man over there? That's Joshua, he can be kind of a stubborn bastard but he's good to all of us. Pretty damn handsome for a man who has survived as many battles as he has."

The Delvian nearly choked on his drink, "you're a fag?" Even standard had insults.

"I'll be a fag looking for a fight if you call me that again."

"I didn't mean anything by it. Just didn't believe it when I heard the Terra Nuevan's had units like yours." He paused, "So...all these women here are they from a unit like yours?"

"Only half," he tilted his head towards me, "Kate here is companion to the Fifty-Eighth, no woman in hers is likely to pay you much mind. See that guy over there? Jack's companion to the Sixty-Second."

The man nodded slowly, "So there's just that one man for a whole unit if women?"

"Yep. Good luck being more charming than Jack though."

"I do intend to try," the man took one last pull of the jug as it came around and went to do just that

...

 

I woke the next morning curled up with Alex. It had been her night and she'd come to dance with me a few rounds and remind me of it. My head hurt a little, too much moonshine. I was still able to get to my feet and head for the new mess hall/ converted barracks. Even though I'd missed breakfast, coffee was needed.

When I came in I saw about half the soldiers who'd risen for first shift busy cleaning guns and cataloging equipment. Sarge was overseeing the start of the process. My stomach sunk. I could think of no reason for such an early inventory other than that we were going over the top soon.

I got a cup of coffee and wandered over to where Joshua and Jack were working their way through a pile of bandages.

"It's really happening then isn't it?" I asked quietly.

"Bernard just made the announcement. We've got three days until everyone's in position."

Sarge wandered over and Joshua held up a tablet so she could look at it.

"We're low on painkillers then?" she asked.

"Just the heavy duty kind."

"If I get shot in the gut I'd prefer more than headache medicine to ease my passing," said Sarge with a frown. "I'll see if the Delvians have some to spare."

"They don't even have a medic," said Joshua. "They told me he got shot two weeks ago and they got no replacement."

"Figures. Carry on."

I spent all that day helping Joshua and Jack get everything ready. Jack and I helped with cooking duty that afternoon since everyone else was busy. I was hauling a bucket of water from the spigot when I heard steps approaching.

I looked up to see the Delvian lieutenant, Lieutenant Sharp, standing closer than I would have liked. He looked at me with hungry eyes. I felt a cold chill run down my spine and my hand tightened on the handle of the heavy bucket.

"Sir?" I did not salute him, he wasn't in my chain of command.

"So the blue stripe on your sleeve means that you're your units whore then?"

I straightened my back, "Companion, I'm my units companion."

"Same thing. It's a shame you dress in a uniform like the rest of them. You're pretty enough for an officer's brothel."

"I dress according to regulation. I need to get back to my duties." I hefted the bucket and started walking.

"How much would it cost me?" he asked, following my steps, "a pack of cigarettes?"

I turned on him sharply, causing water to slosh over the bucket onto my boots, "I am a soldier, not a prostitute. You cannot buy me."

"We'll see," he strode away. My hands shook so badly as I walked back that I lost half the bucket. It was at dinner that some of the trouble started. I was eating with my unit when I noticed an argument rapidly escalating between Sergeant White and the Delvian Lieutenant. It ended with Lieutenant Bernard saying something sharply and everyone going quiet.

When the meal was done I walked back to the barracks with my unit and went to my room. I was restless and wanted something to do with my hands. I found my neglected riffle and set about cleaning it. I would need to do it before we went over the wall anyway.

I heard a polite knock and turned my head to see Sergeant White slipping through the curtain.

"Kate, I want you to stay close to the unit for the next couple of days. That Delvian bastard just tried to offer me pain killers in exchange for a night with you."

Everything inside me went cold, "We need those."

"Not that badly. You're not something to be traded or sold."

She sat down next to me. It was her night, although she didn't usually join me so early. She scooted over quickly when she realized she'd sat down on a gun.

"You're cleaning that now?"

I shrugged, "I'm going to need it aren’t I?"

Something passed over her face, "Kate, has Joshua not talked to you yet?"

"About what?"

"You and Jack aren't going on this maneuver with us. You'll both stay here to set up a medical station."

"But I can help. You know I can keep up. You saw that when we landed."

Sarge wearily ran a hand through her greying hair, "That's not what this is about. I've decided it will be better for unit moral if they know you're here safe."

"I'm their shield-maiden, it will be better for moral if I'm with them. As unit companion, I have the right to go. To live or die by their side."

"Not if I order you as your sergeant to stay."

"Why? Why do I have to stay when Joshua is going? He's told me he's gone with his unit into combat every single time they've gone."

"Because I'm your commander and I order you too," she snapped, her tone brokered no argument.

"Yes Lieutenant," I said softly.

Her face softened, "Listen Kate, you're not Joshua and your unit is not his. I'm leaving you behind because I don't know how many of us are going to be coming back from this, but those who do are going to need you." She lowered her voice further, "I've seen what happens to units that lose their companion, it's bad. The older soldiers, they could take it, but these girls," she shook her head, "they need something to hang onto."

She leaned back against the mattress resting on her arms as she closed her eyes. "I can do this, all of this, this war, this bloody freezing trench, all of it because I know that Mary is back at home safe and waiting for me. These women, they don't have a Mary, they've got you."

"I'm not her."

"No but you're just as strong."

It was in truth the best compliment anyone had ever given me. I still had a question though, "Did Mary go into battle with you?"

"Not for the charges and the raids but she stayed on the front lines with us, moved with us when we shifted camp. During the final retreat she fought at our side."

I rested my head on her shoulder, "And if none of you come back?"

"Then you'll have the choice to be transferred to a new unit, moved to a brothel, or retired without a pension or benefits. Take the retirement, get out of this war and go find Mary. She knows who you are from my letters. She'll take care of you."

"You really mean that."

"Yes, but I pray to god it doesn't happen. I want to make it home, I want to meet my daughter."

"If we all make it home can I still come meet your family someday?"

"Of course."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is as far as I got the first time I tried to write this story. I ended up coming back about a year later and writing a couple more chapters and I'm going to go ahead and post them for you folks. The chapters that I'll post over the next couple days will be a bit darker than the first part of the work and I'm really debating if I should keep them or chuck them when I finally get around to a full re-write.
> 
> Anyway I'll post appropriate tags and warnings at the start of each chapter.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: While not explicitly shown this chapter deals with the rape of a male side character. It includes both the immediate aftermath and the character talking about what happened.

We did end up having trouble with the Delvians, but not in the way we had expected. After their lieutenant made his unsuccessful bid for me, I stayed close to the women’s barracks. The rest of the Forty-Two and the Fifty-Eight were more careful than they’d been that first night when we had all so easily co-mingled. My unit had heard what the Devlian lieutenant had said, and it somewhat cooled them towards the unit. It didn’t help that the same night a Delvian had gotten overly grabby with a member of the Fifty-eight, who hadn’t been in the mood to be gotten grabby with and then he didn’t listen when she told him to lay off. She’d ended up punching him in the nose. No orders were given but none of the women went anywhere alone after that.

No one in the Sixty-Second thought they had to be careful though, least of all Joshua. None of the strangers had made any advances, much less threats towards any of them. I still wake up in a cold sweat sometimes wondering I could have survived what Joshua did. If I could have kept my cool or fought as well as he did. The night it happened I was sitting in the dorm, playing poker with a couple members of my unit when the camp outside suddenly exploded into noise.

There was no alarm or siren, but we could hear yelling. Everyone grabbed their riffles and I did the same, along with my heavy medics pack. Sergeant Cooper was in the dorm. Not knowing what was happening she barked orders for most of her unit to go back up the perimeter guards and then for the rest to follow her. Jack fell soundlessly to my side. He carried only his medic's bag as he’d never been much of a shot.

We found most of the camp in the middle of a very ugly standoff outside the munitions shed. There were weapons drawn between the Delvians and the Varcians. Sergeant White and Harper were physically holding back Lieutenant Bernard, who was trying to get at a bloodied soldier cowering behind the Delvian Lieutenant. The ranking officers at least weren’t holding weapons.

Sarge saw me and Alex out of the corner of her eye and barked, “Kate, Alex. Joshua’s hurt. Get him out of the shed and to the barracks.”

We moved towards the shed but two of the Devlians moved to block out path. “No, you don’t. He killed one of ours.”

Jess put herself in between us in an instant. I hadn’t even noticed her standing with the others. Her riffle hung at her side but she did not seem intimidated by the guns pointed at her. Instead she took a step forward, until the barrel of one rifle was a half breath from her chest.

“Put that down and back away.”

The two men didn’t move. Very calmly she reached out, grabbed the barrel of the riffle and yanked it away from the man. She broke it over her knee in a shower of metal and plastic parts. Even for a genetically modified soldier, that was impressive.

Soundlessly Mark moved to her side. The second Delvian dropped his rifle to hang by its shoulder strap before Mark could repeat Jess’s demonstration. They two GES’s moved forward like a pair of stalking lions and the Delvians got out of their way.

I recognized the smell of death before I got to the shed. Once you’ve smelled the blood and offal of a man’s insides you can never mistake it for anything else. I stepped into the darkness and clicked on my flashlight. I cannot describe the relief I felt when I and realized that the dead man on the ground in a pool of blood with a slit throat, wasn’t Joshua. The other man, the one curled up and clutching at a knife in his gut wasn’t him either. A true medic, one who’d sworn an oath, would have helped the man on the ground first. I wasn’t a medic and my first loyalty lay with Joshua.

He was on his feet leaning against the wall. What remained of his clothes were torn. His hands were covered in blood and he was breathing as rapidly as a frightened animal. I’m not sure he recognized me when I first shined the light on him.

“Joshua,” Jack said softly and tried to move towards him.

Joshua flinched back a half step.

I lowered my light, “Joshua, it’s just us. It’s ok. We’re here now.”

That seemed to get through to him. He looked at me frantically. “They attacked me, they…I got free for a minute and…Oh gods, we have to tell Lieutenant Bernard. This is bad, this is really bad.”

I noticed a pile of plastic wrapped blankets and quickly tore one open and held it out towards Joshua. I didn’t think taking him back outside bloodied and half naked was going to improve things.

“Here,”

He didn’t take it, so I moved closer, wrapping it around his trembling shoulders. When I put the edges of the blanket in his hands he clutched them.

“We need to get you to the barracks where you’ll be safe. Can you walk?”

“I think so.” When he tried to take a step his face went white with pain. Jess and Mark quickly moved to his sides, lending their strength. Things were quieter when we got back outside, as if everyone were waiting to see who or what would emerge from the shed.

There were soft murmurs of shock and relief when Joshua’s unit saw him alive. When they realized the state he was in, I saw hands tightening on triggers and the same in response from the Delvians.

With more calm then I would have thought I could possess, I motioned the GES’s and Jack to get Joshua out of there and stayed to tell the Delvian Lieutenant. “One of your men is still alive, he won’t be for long without a combat medic.”

The man’s face was an odd mix of fear, anger, and exhaustion. All of the confidence he had threatened me with before was gone, “If I ask you will you help him?”

I looked to Sarge, who was standing beside Bernard but no longer had his arm gripped. She gave me an almost imperceptible nod and then spoke to the Lieutenant.

“I’ll permit her to, if your men lower their weapons.”

“Only if yours do too.”

“You first.”

Somewhat to my surprise the Delvian Lieutenant gave a weary sigh and made a hand motion. Guns lowered on their side and then a moment later on ours. I went back into the shed and what awaited me there.

 

I had never treated a life threatening injury before, much less a stab wound, never really used most of the years of medical training I had. If the man had been anyone I cared about, or even a complete stranger, I might have been daunted by my own inexperience. I’d seen how Joshua’s clothes had been torn. I knew enough to guess what had happened. I wasn’t the kind of person to twist the blade and hurry the man onto death, but I felt no pity for him either.

I slid entirely into a cold professional place and let my training guide me. The stab wound was bad, he’d lost a lot of blood and the shed floor was far too filthy to operate on. I gave him enough of a sedative to keep him still, stabilized the knife with a gauze bandages and had his fellow Delvians move him on an improvised stretcher to the field hospital I had set up a few days before in one of the empty barracks.

Soldiers from both groups watched the injured man and me and kept out of the way as I worked. I did everything the way it was supposed to be done. I washed my hands; I put on the plastic gloves. I checked the wound. I clamped the bits that would have bled before I removed the knife. There was no question that it was Joshua’s. He’d carved his initiation JJ into it, like he did most of his things. I was amazed to find that although the blade had gone deep, nothing important had been nicked, nothing beyond my skill to mend. The man would have probably lived even without my assistance, but I knew better than to say that. I stitched the wound in the way I had been taught that would allow it to drain. I gave him a preventative shot of antibiotic and set up a drip of fluids. When all that was done, he was asleep and breathing. His pulse was steady. I covered him in a blanket and told his fellow soldiers to find me if he worsened.

I threw away my gloves in a biohazard bag and stepped out into the night, taking as deep a breath of the cool air as I could. The camp was finally quiet. No campfires were burning that night. The only light came from the distant outlines of the barracks doors.

“Is the bastard still alive?” asked Mel, stepping from the shadows. She had clearly been waiting for me.

“Yes,” I said quietly.

“Then you had better come along and report.”

“What about Joshua?”

“Jack saw to him. He’s safe in the men’s barracks.”

“And everyone else?”

“No one has drawn any more blood yet, even if they are calling for it. That’s something.”

She led me through the darkness to the brilliant lights of the barracks we had been using as a mess hall.

It was empty, save for a small conference that consisted of the three respective Terra Nuevan leaders, Jack, Lieutenant Sharp and his two ranking officers. They were all sitting at a long table as if negotiating a ceasefire. Sergeant Cooper looked angry as hell. Lieutenant Bernard looked well beyond that, in the way only very large men can when they sit utterly still. Sarge alone seemed to be utterly calm, but I knew her well enough to recognize a mask when I saw one.

The Delvian Lieutenant looked up when I entered the room, his face even more exhausted if that were possible. His normally carefully styled brown hair was a mess of disheveled spikes from him running his hands through it.

I answered his question before he asked it, “He’s alive and I think he’ll stay that way even without a medical evacuation. No organs damaged.”

Oddly that did not seem to be the answer her was hoping for. He bit at his lip, “Is he awake enough to speak?”

I sat down next to Jack. “Not with the amount of sedative I gave him. It should wear off by morning.”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Cooper. “We’ve got Joshua’s account of what happened and the surviving bastards confession. That is enough to hold a tribunal now.”

“No its not,” snapped the Delvian Lieutenant, “If we are doing this, I want a proper tribunal, done tomorrow not tonight. I’m not going to allow you to shoot two of my soldiers based on the testimony of a whore and one frightened man’s confession.”

Lieutenant Bernard surged to his feet, “I warned you that if you called my units companion a whore one more time…”

He didn’t get a chance to finish his threat, Sergeant White grabbed his harm “Michael please, this isn’t helping.”

He frowned but sat back down, “No, but those bastards deaths will.”

“Which unless you want to grab a riffle and fight your way through an entire unit of Delvian soldiers to shoot a bound man, requires us all to agree to form a joint tribunal and order the executions.”

Lieutenant Bernard crossed his arms; “I’m fine with waving the formalities if you are. They raped him, Lily. They raped Joshua.” It came as something of a shock to hear him call Sergeant White by her first name. I had never heard anyone say it before. I only even knew what it was from her file. Bernard lowered his voice, “You damn well wouldn’t be sitting here so calmly if it had been Kate they’d gotten their hands on, or Mary.”

Something not unlike a lightning strike flashed through Sarge’s eyes. She took a slow steadying breath, regaining her composure.

“No I wouldn’t but I hope to the gods that if our places were reversed you would be the calm one keeping me from doing something spectacularly stupid. We go over the wall with these people in three days. If we can’t calm things down enough for all of us to fight side by side by then were all going to die, and that includes Joshua and Kate if the trench falls.”

Bernard’s shoulders slumped almost imperceptibly, “Fine, we’ll do it your way. As long as the bastards die.”

“Which I haven’t agree to yet,” snapped Lieutenant Sharp, “Honestly, if were going to get all blood feud about the business, I would say we are even. Your unites “companion,” managed to kill one of his attackers and maim the other, that seems more than fair retribution for a rape.”

The silence that fell was not a comfortable one. Sergeant Cooper broke it.

“So you admit they raped him then.”

Lieutenant Sharp realized his mistake and paled, “I don’t know, I wasn’t there. I’m looking at the same evidence you are, and while it does seem rather damming, for all I know it is also possible that your man is a murdering psychopath. What actually happened doesn’t matter, what matters is what our units think happened and how we respond to that. Like Sergeant White said, we go over the wall in three days, we need to get our troops back to a point where they can go into battle together.”

Bernard looked as if he was going to stand up again, but instead he took a slow breath.

Lieutenant White’s eyes narrowed a bit. “Then I can promise you that our troops are not going to be able to go over the shield with yours unless they see the men who raped a shield companion punished. I know perfectly well your own military codes classify any act of rape by one of your own soldiers against a fellow soldier as an act of treason and punishable by execution. Tell me what you need from us to get your soldiers to accept your own laws.”

The man ran his hands through his hair in frustration. “That code only covers members of our own military, not allies. I see your point though. What I need from you is the appearance of due process. It can’t look like you three demanded the mens’ deaths and we shot them for you. You have to see this from my side. All my soldiers have seen is one of their comrades dead, one injured, and your man covered in their blood. The one thing you have in your favor it that your medic girl kept Private John from dying, that might help convince the troops that you all want justice instead of just revenge.

“Honestly I’d rather throw both men into the brig and let headquarters sort this out but I understand the situation and your urgency. If this has to be done before we go over the wall there has to be a full joint tribunal, with three of mine and three of yours as judges. All evidence has to be heard, everyone involved has to testify. It should take at least half a day. That should be enough to convince my soldiers that the executions will be a matter of military justice, regardless of where they approve of the execution or believe in the men’s guilt.”

Lieutenant Bernard leaned forward, “Does this mean I have your word that the two surviving two men who hurt Private Joshua Stokes, will be dead and in the ground before sunset tomorrow?”

Lieutenant Sharp closed his eyes, collected himself and then gave a solemn nod, “barring any exonerating evidence coming to light, which we all know won’t, then yes. The sentence has to come from me though and the firing squad has to be made up of only my own men. If that is acceptable, then we are agreed.”

“It will have to be.”

With the meeting ended everyone dispersed. Jack touched my shoulder. Very quietly he said, “Kate, can you help me watch over Joshua?”

“Of course.”

We walked back to the barracks with the others, but paused outside the men’s barracks, so Jack could update me.

“How is…” I couldn’t actually think of how to say it.

“Nothing is broken that can’t heal. He’s not in shock anymore, but beyond that I don’t know. He’s doing well enough to be more worried about his unit than himself. He made me promise I’d keep them from doing anything stupid tonight. I need you to sit with him. I tried to get him to take a sedative, but he won’t. If you can just get him to finally lie down, that might help.

“I’ll try.”

When we entered the men’s barracks every single set of eyes in the place fell on us and then turned back to Lieutenant Bernard, who was explaining about the tribunal in the morning. Jack gave my shoulder a squeeze and then a gentle nudge tint he direction of Joshua’s room at the back of the barracks.

Like Jack, Joshua had a door. It was made up of what had once been several completely different doors. Somewhat absurdly it occurred to me that I was the only companion who didn’t have one. I shook off the thought and knocked. There was no answer, so after a moment I pushed it open and stepped inside, closing it behind me.

Somehow, after everything I had seen that day, the sight of Joshua sitting cross-legged in sweatpants and a short sleeved shirt with his disassembled rifle in front of him on a white cloth and cleaning brush in his hand didn’t surprise me. If it had not been for the bruises on his face and the rope marks on his wrists the moment would have almost been completely normal. He had to be in pain. He should be lying down but I had no way to make him do that.

Not knowing what else to say, I said, “can I help?”

He looked up at me with utterly weary brown eyes. The answer was clearly there.

“With the gun at least.”

He nodded very slowly, “I haven’t started on my side arm yet. You can do that.”

I took up the pistol from where it was sitting and began breaking it apart. In the silence that stretched between us it was impossible not to notice how badly his hands were shaking. I wondered if I should offer him something from my med kit, but if he hadn’t accepted a sedative from Jack earlier, he probably hadn’t changed his mind. Another thought occurred to me.

“Do you want a drink?”

“What?”

I reached for my medical kit and fished out a plastic flask. “Here, its some of Sam’s final batch of rot gut, god's rest her soul.”

He blinked and accepted the flask as it were a foreign object. He unscrewed the cap, took a sip and then a proper swig. When he passed it back to me I took one too before offering it again.

“Are you seriously carrying around a flask in your med kit?”

“We’re low on pain killers and this shit is strong.”

He nodded and took another swig, “makes sense. I should add some to my bag.”

We drank for a little bit and then he screwed the cap back onto the flask and set it between us among the gun parts.

“So what has been decided? I haven’t heard shot’s fired but that doesn’t mean things haven’t gone to shit out there.”

He sounded almost exactly like his normal self, just not quite.

“They’ll be a joint tribunal tomorrow. Our three commanding officers and three of theirs. They’ll find the two surviving attackers guilty of raping a fellow soldier and the Delvians will execute them by firing squad.

He blinked, relief, worry and fear all flashing across his face. After a long pause his features settled into removed blankness, “that isn’t going to make the Delvians like us very much.”

“It’s the only way to keep Bernard from going to shoot your rapists himself”

Joshua grimaced and reached for the flask again, “Whatever the fuck those bastards are, I claim no ownership of them. They are rapists, they raped me. They aint mine.”

His hands shook too badly to unscrew the cap, so I did it for him. He took a longer drink this time, nearly emptying the flask before giving it back.

“Finish the damn thing, I don’t want to be drunk alone.”

I did as he bid and then fished a second one from my pack. He waved it away.

“Am I going to have to testify tomorrow?”

“I think so.”

“Give me the damn flask then.”

He drank more, so did I. He looked down at the disassembled gun, as if he didn’t remember how it had gotten there. The whiskey must have taken some effect, because his hands didn’t shake when he folded up the white cloth and moved the pieces off the bed.

“I’d rather suffer the whole damn thing again then have my unit know it happened at all.”

“You know it is not your fault.”

He shook his head slowly, “I fucking know that. I’m not stupid. What I hate is that now they are angry and scared three days before we go through the shield. They don’t need that. What kind of companion can I be, if all my unit sees when they look at me is the harm another has done to me?”

“They might for a while, they won’t always.”

He slumped, leaning against the cool stone wall that his bed was pushed against. “They might all be dead in three days. There ain't gonna be a later for a lot of them. There might not be for me.” His eyes had drifted shut, “I shouldn’t have fought, not like I did, at least not after they’d gotten me down. I could have endured it, found some way to explain away bruises, so no one had to know.”

Dampness started to form at the edge of his eyes. He covered his face with his hands, “But it hurt so much and I was scared that they’d kill me when they were done. They didn’t tie my wrists very well. They didn’t noticed that I got the knot undone, got my wrist free before the third one took me. It wasn’t so hard to throw him off then, to get my boot knife.”

His voice faltered for a moment. When I reached out and touched his shoulder, he didn’t flinch, but he didn’t seem to feel it. He found his words, “I should have run. If I hadn’t killed that bastard no one would have had to know. Fear had me, and when he tried to shove me back down, I slit his throat, just like I was trained to do in a fight in the trenches. I tried to stand and get out the door then but the other one was in the way, so I stabbed him. The third one ran and then there was all the yelling…and then you and Jack came and found me.”

Sobs took him for a moment, but only a brief one. When he lowered his damp hands from his face, I offered him an unused gun cleaning cloth and he accepted it. When he was done I took his hands in my own, just sitting there with him. He startled me when he freed one hand to wipe at my face. I hadn’t realized I was crying too.

“I’m gonna be ok kid. I came through Broken Shield, I’ll come through this.”

“I know you will.”

He reached for the flask, drank again, gave it me and I did the same.

“The most fucked up thing though is that I’m still relieved that they got me instead of you or Jack. If it had been one of you two, I’d have been right there helping Bernard shoot the bastards.”

His words chilled me to the core. “What?”

He looked away, as if guilty that he’d spoken.

“Joshua, tell me what that meant.”

“You shouldn’t hear this.”

“Tell me damn it!”

“When they…when they were hurting me they said they’d first come up with a plan to could grab you. Then you stopped leaving the barracks so they decided to grab Jack, because he was a companion too and they wanted one.” His whole body started to shake again, like a rabbit before a fox. “They, they.” He was hyperventilating.

“Breath, Joshua Breath.” My words didn’t seem to help.

“They said that they couldn’t get him alone though. When the women from his unit stopped going anywhere alone, it meant he was always with one, keeping her safe. So then they…they realized I was a companion and that I did leave the barracks alone.”

He tugged his hands from mine, hugging them rightly around himself. “They followed me into the shed when I went to get some radio parts. I knew something was wrong the moment I heard the door open behind me but no one said anything. By the time I turned, it was too late. I…I tried to fight then. I did, but one hit me in the back of the head and when the world stopped spinning, they’d tied me up and…” His eyes were blank, the events of a few hours before playing back for him.

I grabbed his shoulders, “Joshua. Joshua stops it. You’re safe now. It’s over.”

He cried again, now without any restraint. I held him. He buried his face in the softness of my hair and wept until he had no tears left.

I rubbed at his back. “They’ll all be dead by sunset, one already is. They can’t hurt you, they’ll never hurt anyone again.”

That seemed to help more than anything I had said. He wiped his face with the cleaning cloth again. His breath had slowed back to normal. “Gods I’m tired.”

“You should lie down.”

“Ok.”

We were both fairly drunk but I still managed to help him stretch out and get a pillow under his head and a blanket over him. He curled up on his side, and I took one of his hands that was above the covers. I wondered if I should lie down next to him, or hold him like I would for an upset woman in my unit. Joshua answered that for me.

“Don’t stay on the bed Kate,” he murmured sleepily. “Don’t let Jack or anyone from my unit try to hold me either, not even Bernard. I’m scared I won’t remember where I am when I wake up and I don’t want to hit anyone.”

I let go of his hand and climbed off of the bed, “I’ll make sure of it. I promise.”

“Thank you.”

This time when his eyes closed, they stayed that way and his breath slowed in sleep.

A deep weariness has suffused my own body. As the room lacked even a chair, I opted to wrap up in an extra blanket and lean against the wall. I had meant to keep watch but the next thing I knew the door was creaking open.

It took me a moment to recognize the large figure in the dim light of the rooms small lamp that I had had forgotten to turn off.

“Lieutenant Bernard?” I asked groggily.

“Yes, lass.” He hesitated in the doorway, as if uncertain if he should enter. “I can sit with him, if you want to get back to your own unit.”

“I want to be here when he wakes, in case he’s in pain.” Not that I had much to give him if he was. He was probably already going to have a hangover when he woke, so more booze wasn’t a great idea, and we didn’t exactly have morphine to spare. All the same I didn’t want to leave a fellow companion alone on such a dark night, even in the protection of his own lieutenant. If Joshua woke with only Bernard there, he’d have to be strong. If I was there, then maybe I could help at least.

“I’ll sit with you for a bit then. Help you keep watch over him.”

It was very, very odd to see the normally confident lieutenant so hesitant.

He sat down beside me cross-legged on the floor beside the wall. I noticed that the second flask had fallen to the floor, so I leaned forward and picked it up to offer to Bernard.

“You are a blessing unto women,” he said, the ghost of a smile in his voice.

“So I’m told.”

We sat and he drank. I drank a bit more when the flask came back to me. I knew I’d regret it bitterly in the morning but couldn’t seem to bring myself it care.

“It’s stupid, but if there was ever a man I thought might be invincible, it’s him.”

I tilted my head.

Bernard kept talking, although he was looking at Joshua’s sleeping form not me. “He’s the only one who came through Broken Shield without a scratch, at least on his skin. He kept me; he kept all of us that survived the battle, whole and sane. Somehow he stayed kind and hopeful in the face of so much loss and pain. He’s the heart of the unit, the only reason it works.”

He tilted his the flask back, draining it. “I’m good at giving orders, making strategic plans, all that fucking bullshit. Joshua though, he can deal with people. He can listen, make them stop hurting, feel better. I’ve never been able to do that.”

I offered him the third and final flask from my medical bag, He blinked but didn’t question why I had it or how. He just drank deeply.

“And now I’ve fucking failed him.”

“You haven’t,” I said simply. “None of us knew those men would target him.”

“We should have though. Lily, your sergeant, she told me she was worried about your safety after that weak bastard of a Delvian captain tried to buy you for a few meds. Lily said she didn’t trust the Delvians. She was concerned that one of them might try something with a member of the Forty-Second or Fifty-Eight. I told my unit to stay closer to the other two units, to make sure a woman was never on her own around the Delvians. I just, well I never thought those bastards would try to hurt a member of my unit or that they’d go after Joshua for his blue stripes.

“Damn it all to hell,” he slammed his closed hand against the wall. I jumped and he noticed and looked ashamed that he’d startled me. “If I’d thought for half a damn minute, I should have told him to stay closer to the barracks.”

“You blaming yourself isn’t going to help,” I said.

“How can I not? My unit’s companion was just raped and I don’t even have the balls to avenge him personally. We have to have some stupid tribunal tomorrow; just so those Delvian bastards can shoot their own mad dogs. I don’t think there is a deeper way to fail as a commander or as a soldier.”

What I said next might have come from being tired, or still drunk, or I might have said it anyway dead sober.

“Revenge is what you want, not what Joshua needs. The only thing he cares about is keeping his unit safe, which if you’re a proper lieutenant, is what you should care about too.”

Bernard looked as startled as he would have if I’d smacked him in the face. I was on a roll so I decided to keep going.

“Don’t you know what he’s been fucking worrying about tonight? He’s terrified that this will stop the Delvian’s from fighting at our side when we got through the shield. He’ll survive this but I don’t think he can come back from losing half a unit again. So, if you give a flying fuck about him, tomorrow you’ll keep your damn emotions in check and do what you have to.”

He handed me what was left of the flask clearly not know what else to do. “You’ve got a lot more spirit in you than you let on girl,” he said.

I took the flask and drained it, “Most companions do.”

“I’m starting to see that.”

Wearily I closed my own eyes, “Joshua, is a thousand times stronger than me. He’ll survive this. Try to be as strong as him and then you’ll be a help to him not a burden.”

“I will lass, I swear it.”

“Good.”

There was nothing more to say and weariness and the moonshine finally pulled me down into sleep again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While editing this work I've actually been debating with myself if I should drop this subplot from future drafts of this work. I'm worried it might just be gratuitously depressing and dark, especially as the story already takes a darker turn in the next chapters when the unit goes over the top. 
> 
> I'm also concerned that including a rape, even off screen with a side character, shifts the vibe of the entire work. Up until this point in the narrative any sex in the story has been happy and joyful. 
> 
> On the other hand several major plot points in the coming chapters are based around Joshua's rape, including the ongoing trouble between the Terra Nuevans and the Delvians. It is an effective way to show how dangerous the world of the trenches are even before the characters go into combat.
> 
> Anyway, if you've got an opinion on the matter let me know. The next chapter will include the trial and a later one shows Kate talking with Joshua about his ongoing recovery.


	14. Chapter 14

Dawn came, as it always did. My head hurt terribly but I forced myself into waking. Jack brought porridge and black coffee. We woke Joshua carefully, and for all his worries, he opened his eyes without even a ghost of confusion. He drank the coffee and ate the food we gave him.

His movements were stiff and pained. He took the weak painkillers, one’s no stronger than anything we could have gotten over the counter in Terra Nueva, that I gave him. I would have liked to give him some of our limited supply of stronger stuff, but he had to testify at the tribunal. We couldn’t risk him being muddled.

It wasn’t long before Mel came and said it was time for him to go before the tribunal. When he stood, walking clearly pained him and I wished we had the GES’s there to help us again. Between Jack and I both lent him a shoulder and it wasn’t far to the space outside space where someone had dragged out one of the tables from the eating space for the tribunal. Nearly everyone in the camp who wasn’t on guard duty, the Delvians included, had gathered to watch. Joshua’s attackers were there as well, hands bound. The injured one was sitting on the ground.

Apparently military protocol required witnesses to stand when giving testimony before a tribunal. Joshua couldn’t on his own for very long. So in the end Jack and I stayed by his side, keeping him standing up as he spoke. It tore at every part of me to hear him say again everything he had told me the night before. Except this time he spoke cold and factually, as if reading from a book. His words filled the air with tension and I was glad that no one had their rifles.

When his testimony was done, Jack helped him go lean against one of the building walls and I had to stay and give mine. I wasn’t really sure why. I had nothing more to say then the state I’d initially found Joshua in. For some reason they asked me about how I treated the injured Delvian.

When I was done Jack had to testify and I went to lean against the wall with Joshua. His testimony was harder then mine. He had to say how Joshua had been hurt. He tried to use medical terms, but that didn’t lesson what he was saying. I took Joshua’s hands because they were shaking so badly.

Apparently we were the last to testify because the council withdrew back into the mess

hall/dormitory. They didn’t deliberate for very long, if they were actually doing anything other than just waiting long enough to seem like they’d at least spoken.

Then they came back and Lieutenant Sharp read the sentence, which was what had been agreed upon the night before. Some of his troops objected, but his officers barked them down. Lots for the firing squad were drawn quickly. The execution itself was to take place at the very edge of camp. When the squad was chosen everyone began to shift that way to watch.

Jack took Joshua’s arm, “let’s go back to the dorms, you don’t need to see this.”

“I think I do, they’ll always be in my nightmares if I don’t.”

So we helped him go to where everyone was gathered near an old bombed out building, that had enough of a wall left for two prisoners to stand in front of it. It occurred to me that while I had seen bodies before, I had never seen anyone die. The prisoners were blindfolded. The injured one was cry, the uninjured one tried to beg. All I could think when the rifles cracked was that I had wasted a shot of antibiotics, two shots of sedative and three sutures on the injured one.

Then I had to let go of Joshua’s arm so I could go throw up. I felt utterly emotionally drained but calmer when I straightened up and wiped my mouth. Stella and Cali were hovering by my side.

“Come here sweetheart,” said Stella hugging me tightly.

“I should…” go help Joshua I supposed.

“Jack said he’s got it covered. Come on, you need a rest.”

I was too weary and heart sick to protest. We went back to the dorms and I curled up on my bed between them. Stella and Cali were two of the best cuddlers I knew.

In the evening I went to the dinning hall with the others. I had never seen the room so tense. The Delvians were gathered close together and speaking softly. The Terra Nuevans were grouped equally tightly. I knew it wasn’t good, but at least weapons weren’t drawn.

I ate closely surrounded by my unit. Afterwards the Archer twins escorted me to the men’s dormitory to bring Joshua his food. It had generally been decided that keeping him completely out of sight was for the best.

This time I found him surrounded by even more gun parts. I think he had started gathering other soldier’s rifles to clean. He accepted the tin of food I offered him and ate mechanically, clearly not tasting it, not that there was much to taste with rehydrated soup.

“You don’t need to sit with me again Kate. You have your own unit to take care of.”

“They’ll be fine.”

“They go over the trench in two days. They need their shield-maiden.”

“I’ll be there for them on the eve of battle. Right now you need me more.”

He snorted, setting aside his food tin to take up a polishing cloth. “What a companion needs doesn’t matter more than what a unit does.”

I set about helping him, “maybe it should.”

We worked for a long time in silence, finishing cleaning one riffle and then another. Joshua got up with the cleaned riffles and then came back with more.

“You know what you need to do the night before a battle right?” he asked. His voice had eased back into the familiar tone he always used when teaching. There was something deeply comforting in hearing him speak like that again. If acting like everything was normal was what he needed, I could do that.

“No, but I’m guessing I’m supposed to hold an orgy or something. I feel like that’s probably what Mary always did.”

Surprisingly that got a laugh out of him. “In her case yes. Mary was…Well I never was quite sure how sane that woman was, even before Broken Shield.”

“The unit talks about her like she was a saint.”

That got a shrug, “Maybe. It always seemed to me that she poured too much of herself into her unit. That kind of thing is dangerous. When she lost half of them it broke her in a way that couldn’t be fixed and then she wasn’t there to put the survivors back together.”

I had never thought about it like that.

“But you were, for your unit I mean.”

“Yes.”

“Did you think of leaving like Mary did after Broken Shield?”

He shook his head slowly. “Not really. I doubt it would have even occurred to Bernard to offer to marry me. I’ll eat my own gun before I get thrown into a brothel and you can’t really survive in the capitol on a half pension. If I had left, I would have been no one, just a broken whore without even looks or youth. Here with my unit, I’m someone, I’m needed.”

I understood all of that that well enough.

“So what am I supposed to do the night before a battle?”

“Fuck the commanding officer and then go be with your soldiers. Listen to them, talk, keep them calm. Collect letters to be sent home.”

A half smile came to my lips, “Sarge has never actually fucked me.”

He raised eyebrow. “That sounds like her, she would be the sort to actually honor marriage vows. The way she looks at you though...” that got a chuckle. “Hell maybe she gets off on depriving herself.”

“Probably. I’ve no complaints though. I like her exactly as she is.”

“Good, that is the way it should be between a companion and a unit commander.” Then his face darkened. “Fuck knows if Bernard will ever look at me with anything but pity in his eyes ever again.”

I chose my next words carefully. “I don’t think it is pity, just concern. You are hurt and he’s worried about you. Give your unit and yourself time to heal.”

"I'm trying Kate. I'm trying."

 

 

 

The sun rose on the eve of battle. Camp was chaos for nearly the entire day. Joshua at least had recovered enough to walk more easily, and so spent his time with Jack and me fully prepping the medical station. Eventually, not long before sunset there was nothing left to do so we went and ate in the mess hall.

After the meal, Alex and Ash escorted me back to my dorm. I took a moment to go to my own room. I had not been alone, even for a moment, in days and I needed to gather my thoughts before I went to comfort my unit.

I opened my pack and shifted through it, until I found my mothers shawl. I buried my face in the softness of it half imagining I could still smell her floral perfume after so many years. A knock on the wall nearly caused me to jump out of my skin. I put the shawl back in its plastic bag and pushed it back into my pack.

“Come in.”

Sarge stepped into the room. “Hey there,” she said softly. “If you are busy I can come back later.”

I patted the bed next to where I was sitting cross-legged, “I’m not. What’s up?”

Sarge sat down on the edge of the bed and handed me a faded and still sealed white envelope. It had nothing on it but a drawing of a four quartered shield.

“This is going to sound a bit odd, but before I left Mary gave me this envelope. She said I was supposed to give it to the units new shield-maiden the night before our first battle. I’m not sure what it is, maybe advice for you?”

“Let me see,” I opened the envelope carefully and drew out a single sheaf of paper. Mary’s handwriting was surprisingly neat, each letter carefully etched and spaced.

 

_Dear Companion,_

 

_If you are reading this, then you have care of my wife and her unit. I do not know you; I may never meet you, but know that I am truly and deeply grateful. You are there for those I love when I cannot be. As a favor, I ask that you read this letter and then show it to Lily. Knowing her, she has probably attempted to be very noble and held to her marriage vows. I also know what she’s like before a battle. She needs release and she needs sleep. Tell her that she has my permission to set aside her vows of physical fidelity on this night and any other she needs to. If she refuses, tell her that it is an explicit order from me on the eve of battle. If she loves me, she will do as I have bid, to ensure she faces the dawn with a clear head and comes home to me._

 

_With all kindness, Mary Allen_

 

I turned to Sarge, “I think you had better read this too.”

She accepted the letter and read, her face softening and then her eyes widening slightly with surprise. She actually chuckled before setting aside the paper. “Damn that woman is crafty.” She turned to me, “Listen, Kate you-“

I didn’t let her finish, just grabbed her face and kissed her hard. For an instant she froze and then she kissed me back. She was, I found, a very good kisser. I crawled into her lap, pressing my body against hers. Desire burned low in my body. I had wanted her for a long time.

She slipped her hands under my shirt, touching the warm skin of my back, pulling me close. I raised my arms just long enough for her to tug off my shirt and unclasp my bra. One moment I was straddling her and the next she had rolled me onto my back and was tugging at my pants.

“Wait, let me undress you too.”

“Later. I want you too much.” Her voice as low and throaty, half choked with desperate longing. She got my pants off and her hand found my center just as her mouth covered mine. I was so slick, two and then three of her fingers slipped into me without any preparation. She fucked me quick and hard and then slow and deep. I came again and again clenching on her fingers as she kissed me breathless. When she added a fourth finger it burned, but I wanted it too much to protest. I ached and clenched and pressed upwards, by body begging for everything she had to give me.

“Lube?”

“What?” I gasped.

“Lube. Where is it?”

“Under the pillow. I…oh…I’m already wet.”

She kissed me on the forehead as she reached over me to fetch the little plastic tube. “Not enough for this.

I whimpered in desperation when she suddenly took her hand from me. She quickly opened the tube with one hand and spread the slick liquid over her entire hand and wrist.

My eyes went wide.

“Have you ever…” She didn’t need to finish her sentence.

I shook my head.

She kissed me again before whispering in my ear. “Trust me, you are going to like this.” She went back to fucking me with four fingers and then I felt her thumb pressing against my entrance as well.

It stretched and hurt a little but I couldn’t seem to stop moving against her moaning, aching with desire. She adjusted the angle of her hand and pressed in again. This time she brought the thumb of her other hand to slowly rub at my clit. Slowly, incredibly slowly she pressed her hand into me.

In an instant it went from stretching to painful as she reached the broadest part of her hand. I cried out, but before I could find words she slipped in further and then all the way. She didn’t stop until her entire hand was inside of me, all the way to her wrist. I lay panting, my entire body trembling as I adjusted to what had just happened. She kissed my eyes, my lips, my cheeks, murmuring to me sweetly.

I was closer to an orgasm then I had realized and after a moment my hips seemed to move on their own. An almost devilish grin spread across the commander’s face and she curled her hand inside of me, Then she began to rock it very slightly.

I came, hard. Screaming her name, digging my nails into her still shirt clad back and begging for more. She obliged, fucking me harder and harder as I rolled my hips against her. I came and came again until I couldn’t any more and at last slumped against the bed. Very, very gently she eased her hand from my still clenching cunt. She pulled my trembling body into her arms, careless of the lube she got on the sheets and my naked body.

I curled against the warmth of her. She kissed my head, stroking my hair, still murmuring to me softly. When I was cognizant enough to think again, I rubbed at my face and realized that I had been crying. It may well have been the first time in my life that I had ever wept from sheer release instead of grief.

She stroked my back until my breaths grew even and I calmed. When I had a voice again, I said, “You don’t do anything by half do you?”

She nuzzled my hair, “Of course not.”

“Wow.”

“Yea.”

“If I had known fisting was that good, I think I would have finally let Tali do it to me months ago.” More than a few of the older women in the unit had asked to do it to me, but I had always refused. Normally four fingers felt very tight, and I hadn’t wanted to risk an injury.

That got a chuckle, “But then you wouldn’t have gotten to first do it with me.”

“Glad I waited then. Gods.” I snuggled against her more closely. It was some time before I had regained enough strength to touch her in return.

She seemed a bit surprised when I started to undo her pants. “You don’t have to.”

“But I want to.”

It did not take much to get her off, fucking me had clearly had her more than primed. I had to only brush my fingers against her clit and press for her to close her eyes and moan in desperation.

“Just use them on the outside,” she murmured.

I obeyed and she arched within a minute. It didn’t take much to get her to arch again and then she gently pushed my hand away. She stretched out beside me, content and languid. When I was sure she was asleep, I kissed her cheek and slipped from the covers. I cleaned up as best I could, dressed and went to check on the unit. I could hear music and laughter drifting in from the dorm.

When I stepped out from behind my curtained alcove the entire room went silent. Jack had his fiddle in hand, bow frozen in movement. Stella and Cali had paused in a dance mid twirl. Mel, gave me a knowing smirk and then clapped. Of course everyone, including the entirety of the Fifty-Eight join in.

With a shrug I bowed comically. “Ha, ha, you’ve all heard me before. Go back to what you were doing.”

And for the main part they did. Jack resumed playing. Alex sidled up to me, “I’ve gotten you off plenty of times, but you never sounded like that.”

“Maybe you weren’t doing it right,” I teased back as I walked towards where a jug was being passed around. There were no chairs, so everyone was sitting on blankets on the floor.

Mel caught my wrist and tugged me into her lap, “Hey pretty girl.”

“Hey old lady,” I said affectionately and kissed her cheek. She nuzzled my hair in a way oddly reminiscent of Sarge, but I didn’t complain and instead settled back against the warmth of her body.

Sergeant Cooper, who was sitting in a similar way in Marks lap, leaned over and nudged me. The ease of her smile told me that she was slightly drunk. I had never seen her that way before. She was always so carefully held together, so aware and watchful. Come to think of it, it was also unusual for Mark to be in the women’s dorm, or holding Cooper in front of others. While he didn’t look drunk, he was actually smiling, and clearly very happy to have an attractive woman in his arms.

Sergeant Cooper nudged me again, “Seriously though, what did she do? I’ve been listening to you fuck for months, because this place has no damn privacy, and you never screamed that much.”

I laughed and accepted a jar of rotgut that was passed to me, “You know companions aren’t supposed to talk about what they do in bed with the members of their unit.”

Mel kissed my ear, “But your unit is free to speculate and gossip as much as they damn well want.” She leaned forward to half whisper to Cooper.

“If you want my guess, that much yelling and that long, I bet Sergeant White fisted her. Mary always made sounds like Kate just did when Lily did that to her.”

“Mel!” I snapped, feeling my face turn crimson.

Cooper just giggled. I couldn’t get over how weird it was to see a sergeant giggle. “Don’t be silly, that isn’t a real thing.

Millie and Sarah thumped down next to us to join the conversation. “Of course it’s a real thing,” said Millie matter of factly.

“What does fisting mean?” asked Mark.

“Putting your whole hand inside someone.”

He frowned, “I think you are teasing me. That does not sound possible.” I got the feeling, he’d spent a lot of time putting up with others making fun of his general lack of cultural context.

Sarah gave Millie a lazy smile, even as she answered Mark, “oh it is.”

He still looked dubious. Cooper grabbed her lover’s hand and held it up for inspection. “Yea, no way that would work.”

Behind me Mel chucked, “Women have smaller hands than men sweetie, there is a reason fisting is more of a thing among women.

A look of comprehension seemed to dawn in Coopers eyes. “Ah. I didn’t think about that.”

“Want a demonstration?” asked Sarah eyeing Millie, before completely dissolving into laughter.

“You lot are ridiculous,” I told them all, unable to keep myself from laughing.

Cooper couldn’t help herself and dissolved into laughter as well for a bit. When she caught her breath she said, “I guess you guys have to have some fun stuff that’s more your thing. Especially since you don’t get to play with penises. I really like those, especially when they’re attached to attractive men.”

She was definitely drunk, there was no question of that. So was everyone else though.

“They do make plastic ones you know,” said Millie.

“Plastic men?” asked Cooper.

“No plastic penises. Dildos,” explained Sarah. You can get them in any size you want.”

“Really?” asked Cooper.

The conversation continued to go deeper into the gutter from there, if that was possible. I wiggled out of Mel’s lap and kissed her before I went to find Jack. He was still playing his fiddle, but slowered it when I walked over.

Quietly I said, “We should try to get them to bed down before they all get any drunker. They need sleep and time to sober up before tomorrow.”

He nodded, “I’ve got a song for that. Go see if you can collect the jugs and jars while I lead up to it.

He brought his bow to the fiddle again, and this time the tempo of the music was greatly slowed. He played something low and sad for a bit and then very sweetly, he sang a song called, “The Parting Glass.”

When he was done everyone drifted towards their bunks on their own volition. I quietly worked my way through the room. Pausing at the sleeping alcove of each member of my unit, to whisper a few words, or offer a kiss, or just a clasp of hands. When I had completed my circuit, I thought to go to my own bed, but I heard the soft sound of crying amongst the snores and soft murmurs of quiet sex. It was something I had heard far too often those last couple of days.

I followed the sound to Ash’s bunk. I pushed the curtain back and slipped onto the hard stone alcove with her. She made no protest when I pulled her into my arms. I held her as tight as I could.

“It’s ok,” I whispered.

“I’m sorry, I’m just so scared,” she told me.

“I know.”

Eventually she stopped crying and her body relaxed. I had meant to pull away then and go rejoin Sarge, but I was so tired my eyes closed and I drifted into sleep.

 


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: this chapter includes somewhat graphic descriptions of war injuries and fatalities.

It took everything in me to watch them all leave the next day and not grab my own riffle to follow. All of the Sixty-Second and Forty-Two went, while half of the Fifty-Eight remained to guard the trench. Joshua stayed. It clearly broke his heart to do it, but he knew he was in no state to fight.

While we weren’t going into the field, Jack, Joshua and I took our companions stripes off our uniforms. We took off our red medics badges as well. The Varcians had figured out pretty quickly that most companions were medics, and begun prioritizing capturing them because of it. If the trench fell, the Varcian’s might still be able to guess what we were from our place in the field hospital, but they might not. The one thing we all knew, without a doubt, was that it would be better to be shot as a regular soldier than captured as a companion.

The first of the casualties came an hour later. Two of the Sixty-Second returned with one of the younger members of their unit, Tommy, on a stretcher. Joshua paled the moment he saw him. It took everything I had to stay on my feet. I had never seen what an exploding shell could do to a body. He’d lost most of an arm and his face was a mess of blood and bone. I only knew who he was from the number stitched on his uniform.

Jack gave Tommy a shot of morphine while I checked him over. Joshua talked to the two returned soldiers, seeing how the charge was going. The sounds that Tommy made were horrible, like a strangled animal.

I had to cut away his shirt before I saw just how badly the shell had cut up his side. He was missing a chunk. I knew he wasn’t going to survive, not with that much damage to his guts and no real surgeon to tend him. He should have already bled out with his intestines torn up like they were.

When Joshua finished talking to the soldiers and sent them back out and said, “Jack, prep two more tables, others are coming.”

Then he looked at Tommy, and his uncovered wound and the way I was standing beside him, bandages in my hands. “Kate,” his voice was barely more than a whisper. “Don’t waste the bandages, just give him more morphine.”

“How much?”

“You know how much.”

One of the first things Joshua had taught me was how to give someone a fatal dose.

I shook my head frantically, “maybe we can save him.”

“Kate,” his voice got very low, “I need you to keep your shit together right now. Our units need us. Do as I tell you.”

Weakly I nodded and went to draw the shot. It was easy to slip it beneath his skin, far too easy.

Tommy was still making those horrible noises, but less and less as the morphine began to hit. Joshua knelt beside him, taking the hand he still had left. The injured man was aware enough to clutch at Joshua.

Very, very softly Joshua began to sing a nursery rhyme. He had never had a voice for music, but in that moment it was enough. Tommy went silent. It only took a few minutes for him to go limp and utterly still. We waited a little longer and then I checked his pulse.

“He’s gone.”

“Help me get him off the table and into the corner.” Joshua’s voice was rough with his pain. With Jack’s help we did. We had only a half breath before another group arrived. This time it was one of Jack’s and one of mine. Mica was on her own two feet, leaning heavily against her sister. Her entire left shoulder was a mess of blood. The woman from Jack’s unit was on a stretch and the moment we got her down we saw she was missing a leg.

Jack and Joshua dealt with the woman from the Fifty-Eighth and I got Mica sitting down. When I cut away her shirt I let out a sign of relief. All the damaged was to her shoulder, not her gut. The sight of so many metal fragments imbedded in her dark skin still twisted my stomach, but at least she would live.

Over my shoulder I hear Joshua say, “Give her the rot gut not a pain killer. It looks shallow enough.”

So I did. Luca stood beside the table, helping her sister drink, as I slowly, carefully tugged the huge bits of jagged metal out of her. The wounds went deeper than I would have thought and there wasn’t enough skin left in most places for stitches.

“Use the cauterizer,” Joshua told me.

The sound Mica made will haunt me until my dying day. Luca and I had no sooner settled Mica onto a pallet on the floor when Harper stumbled in with Nix in her arms.

“She’s not breathing!”

“Get her on the table.”

Her skin was already cooling when I touched her. There was no question why. No blood was flowing from the wound in her chest anymore.

“Harper, she’s dead.”

“No, she can’t be. Do something!”

“I can’t, she’s dead.”

Harper grabbed my shoulders and shook me so hard my teeth rattled. “Help her!”

“Harper!” barked Joshua. “Let go of Kate. You’re hurting her.”

She let go of me with a sob and stepped backwards. “No, she can’t. She can’t be dead. She can’t.”

Luca moved quickly, catching Harper’s arm. “Come on, come sit.”

Numbly Harper let herself be led to one of the pallets by the wall where she sat numbly. Joshua quickly drew a shot and pressed it into her arm. Whatever it was didn’t completely knock her out but it kept her calm. She didn’t react when we covered Nix and took her from the table.

There was a pause then. Everyone was as stabilized as they were going to get. I went to go look out the door to look and see if I could see anything. I had no sooner stepped out into the cool air then I felt a knife against my throat. I froze.

“Be silent,” growled a voice in broken standard.

I didn’t hesitate. I didn’t think. I slammed my elbow into the stomach of the man who’d grabbed me and screamed. “Intruders.”

The knife cut my skin as I twisted down and away. I didn’t care. I had my boot knife in my hand when I came up. That was when I heard a rifle cock. I was looking straight into a gun barrel when I raised my head. To this day I still don’t know why he hesitated. I didn’t.

I slapped the barrel of the gun away from my face and the shot that burst forth hit the ground and not me. I rolled away, my world an agony of ringing sound. Someone tried to catch at my arm and I slashed with my blade and cut skin.

I stumbled backward and at last found my feet just as the door to the temporary medical center crashed open. The three Varcians I was facing bolted just as the sound of running footsteps and women’s voices yelling in Catalan reached us.

Nearly all of the Fifty-Eight, who had stayed to guard the trenches, rounded the corner. Luca was the first out of the medical building, rifle raised. Her bullet caught one of the Varcians in the back, but the other two escaped.

“With me,” she barked and the members of the Fifty-Eight fell in behind her in pursuit.

Distantly I heard Joshua telling me to go back inside and let Jack see to me. I obeyed and soon found myself sitting on a table as Jack cleaned my neck with stinging medical alcohol.

“Shit, you need stitches,” he mumbled, already reaching for a kit.

I tried to sit as still as I could while he worked with very careful concise movements. When he was done I found myself nearly hysterical with shock and exhaustion.

“So much for my unblemished looks,” I said.

Jack blinked and then snorted. “It’ll suit you in a battle maiden sort of way. You want a drink for the pain.”

I climbed down from the table. “No, I need my hands steady.”

I turned out to be right because not long after, all the survivors finally made it back. I would learn later that they had managed to destroy a radio outpost, but not take the trench they had meant to. Ash was the first of the group that came limping into the room between Alex and Jess. I cannot describe the relief I felt that none of her was missing, and that the only blood I saw was on her leg.

They got her up onto the table and I set to work treating what turned out to be a bullet wound to her thigh. By some complete miracle the bullet had mostly graze her, tearing skin and fat but missing the bone and causing little serious damage.

She was the last of my unit brought in, although there was one more of the Sixty-Second and three Delvians.

The sun set long before my work was done. I slept a few hours that night on one of the floor pallets before trading off with Joshua and sitting up to watch over the injured. Shortly before dawn the woman from the fifty-eight drifted into death, crying for her mother. One of the Delvians went without a sound.

Dawn found Mica burning with fever. After Joshua examined her again. He told me quietly, “The wounds going septic. We have to take off the arm, or it will kill her.”

“Can’t we wait?”

“You understand what septic means right?”

In the end we took her behind a curtain, into the makeshift operating space and did what had to be done. I wondered if she’d hate me when she woke up. Luca looked at me with something cold and empty when I brought back her sister without an arm. Mica’s fever broke almost immediately.

We couldn’t wait any longer to bury the bodies, so Joshua led a group to go dig the graves. I stayed with the injured while the ones we had lost were laid in the earth. When Joshua came back he told me, “Go see to Harper, she looks like she’s about to eat her gun. Jack and I have things covered here.”

I found her sitting beside the freshly dug earth of Nix’s grave. Stella and Cali were keeping a quiet watch nearby. I gave them a nod, to let them know they could go. I carefully approached Harper. When she raised her eyes to me, they were utterly empty. When I sat down beside her, I saw that she was holding a plastic space ship in her hands. It was the kind of cheap toy you would expect a child would have. It wasn’t hard to guess it must have been something Nix kept as a good luck charm.

Harper turned it over and over in her hands.

“She always said she wanted to die in the sky. The things is though, I always knew she wouldn’t. She was invincible in a pilot’s chair. It was only on the ground she could die.”

I touched her arm lightly and when she didn’t pull away I rested a hand on her shoulder. To my surprise she leaned into the touch.

“She can’t be dead. She just can’t. She was the only reason I could survive this hell. We were going to live long enough to retire, use our pensions to buy a cargo freighter. It wouldn’t have been much but it would have been ours. We would have been free.”

“I know, she told me,” I said gently.

“Without her I have nothing left, nothing. I wish I’d died with her. This isn’t right. This isn’t fair.”

“Nothing in this life is fair.”

“I just want to die.”

“She wouldn’t want you to though. Nix would want you to survive this. She’d want you to achieve her dream.”

“It won’t mean anything without her.” She leaned against me as if everything had gone out of her. She was bigger than me, and a bit to heavy for me to easily support against my shoulder, so I guided her to lay her head in my lap.

“It will to her.”

“She’s dead.”

“Her shade won’t be happy to see you early.”

“I’m a fucking atheist.”

“She was a uni-spiritualist though. She believed in shades, so if they exist, she has one.”

“You just don’t want me to eat my gun.”

“Your right, I don’t.”

We stayed like that long after the sun set and the frost began to seep into our bones. When I began to shiver too violently I nudged Harper.

“Come one. I’m cold and I can’t go back inside without you.”

Stiffly we stood and went back to the dorms. I led her to my room and curled up in her arms.


	16. Chapter 16

It was nearly a week before I could resume my normal sleeping roster with my unit. I had to take too many shifts in the makeshift clinic. Beyond that I had to do what I could to comfort Harper for her loss of Nix, and Mica for her arm.

To my surprise Mica never blamed me or Joshua. Mica should have been given a medical discharge, but with the shields up as they were we had no way to send her back. She mostly slept and read whatever books anyone brought her. If anything, Luca seemed to take her sister’s maiming harder than she did.

Ash at least was doing well. It was all I could do to keep her off her feet long enough for her wound to heal properly and not become infected. I was still not certain how extensive the damage to her leg muscles actually was. I was fairly certain that she would also be limping for some time. I would have liked to have her sent to see a proper doctor, but there was no way to do so.

Jack was in a similar state to me. He’d lost one woman from his unit and had two who were badly injured and still healing. It was actually Joshua who finally said something to both of us. It was early evening and we had taken our food outside the mess to get a bit of fresh air before we had to go back in to tend the injured.

“I’ll take the late shift in the infirmary tonight. You two both needs to get back to your units.”

“You probably need sleep more than either of us,” said Jack.

“I wasn’t talking about either of you needing sleep.”

“I think about the last thing in the world I need right now is a tumble.”

“It’s not what you need. It is what your unit needs.”

I yawned, “They won’t die from needing sex. Hell most of them have someone other than me they fuck on the regular.”

“No but restarting your calendar will help them get back a sense of normality. They need that after the tribunal and going through the shield. Resuming your list is always the first thing you should do when things get back to normal.”

“I guess you have a point there,” said Jack.

Something in my stomach twisted, “Nix and Harper were next on my list. What the hell am I supposed to do about that? I’m pretty sure Harper is too deep in grief to want to touch anyone.”

“Rewrite the list in a new order, so she won’t have to think about it for a while. When her nights comes she can ignore it or just go and let you hold her.”

“Mica and Alex are healing in the infirmary, what do I do about that?”

“Put their names on the list anyway. Work the infirmary late shift on their nights. You don’t have to be fucking someone to give them your time and attention.”

“You’ve really thought this all through, haven’t you?” I said wearily.

“Not thought, done more times then I care to recall.”

So that night I re-wrote the list and put it up on the wall. I put Jess first, just because I knew of all the women in the unit she was one of the few who wouldn’t overthink sex. She showed up and we fucked as we always had before, if a bit more intensely. I noticed love bites all over shoulders when I undressed her and realized that she must had found a lover in the unit, Hallie presumably. They didn’t ask me to tumble them together though. I did Mel next and the experience was equally intense, as if she were trying to remind herself that she was alive.

After that was Sarge’s normal day. She showed up later than she usually did, looking bone weary. I wasn’t really sure what was going to happen or what she needed. Did fucking once mean we always would now?

I sat on the edge of the bed and waited patiently as she tugged off her boots. Then she leaned back and took a deep breath, as it were the first time she had sat down that day. When she turned to look at me, her grey eye was as gentle as it had always been.

“Hey kid, how are you holding up?”

A thousand things sprang to mind and for an instant I almost answered her honestly. I was tired, I was scared, and I was grieving for Nix. Even when I could sleep, my dreams were haunted with the sounds of death and the feel of steel against my throat. I felt utterly inadequate as a companion to get the unit through what it was facing.

“I’m hanging on,” I said simply.

Her gaze fell to the bandage on my neck. “Shit, I heard you were injured when those Varcian bastards got into the camp.”

Instinctively my hand fluttered up to my throat, “It’s not that bad really, not compared to what has happened to anyone else. I only needed a few stitched.”

Her frown deepened, “Kate, you almost had your throat slit. That shouldn’t have happened. I should have left someone from the Forty-Second to keep you safe.”

“I was with Joshua and Jack. Luca was there because she’d brought Mica back. She was out the door and after the Varcian’s a few seconds after I screamed. And I got free on my own. I wasn’t helpless. I even stabbed one of them.”

“The one that hurt you?”

“No idea, it all happened so fast. I know Luca shot the one I stabbed because his body had a knife wound on the arm.” They had gotten a second one during their pursuit as well. The third one had gotten away.

She just kept looking at me with that sad expression. Her hand was hesitant, when she finally reached out and brushed a loose strand of hair from my face. Then, very gently she tugged at the bit of elastic I had used to put my hair back in a ponytail. She brushed it out with her fingers, loose around my shoulders.

It had gotten long since we’d left the base, reaching nearly halfway down my back. I always wore it up, or braided, or in a twist, just like any other woman in the unit who didn’t have her hair cut short. I only let it down when I was attending to a member of my unit. I didn’t exactly have pretty clothes or makeup or anything else to make me seem beautiful but something about wearing my hairs lose seemed to work. It wasn’t like my hair was that remarkable, just dark brain and straight but it was the one part of myself that I really took care of, washed it regularly, cut the loose ends, rubbed a little extract of vanilla behind my ears.

I had been so busy I’d forgotten to brush it out for Sarge.

Softly she murmured, “You’re just so damn young.”

“Not that young, not anymore.”

“That is the way of it, war ages you before your time, even if you come out alive.” She kept stroking my hair, losing her fingers in the softness. “You remind me so much of Mary, of the way she was on our first tour of duty. She was so sweet, so full of joy. She got tougher real quick, but I would have given the world if I could have somehow let her stay as innocent as she was then. On Io, it was warmer than here. There were these white flowers everywhere, even in the trenches. I used to bring them to her and she’d braid them in her hair. I wish I had flowers to give you kid, I wish I had anything.”

I caught her hand and turned it, so that I could kiss her palm, “your company is a gift Sarge.”

That just made her face grow sadder. “And you are kinder than you have any duty to be.” She brought up her other hand to touch my face, trace her fingers beneath my eyes. “You’ve got such shadows under your eyes. When did you last sleep?”

“Last night, I’ve just been having bad dreams.”

“Lie down, I’ll hold you.”

I did, and she encircled me in the warmth of her arms. I wondered if I should try and kiss her, or offer my body, but something told me that she was already asking for exactly what she needed. I rested my cheek in the hollow of her shoulder and let sleep take me.

 

The week slid by and then another. Gradually things began to feel normal again. The sun rose, the sun set and the unit healed as much as it could. The tension that had been between our unit and the Delvians had broken on the day they all went through the shield. I still didn’t go anywhere alone after dark but I went where I needed to during the day without an escort.

We were finally able to stop manning the temporary medical unit 24/7 and run it more like a clinic. Ash and Mica were still recovering, but we could see to them in the barracks. They had actually grown fairly close during their time together in the medical unit. Neither had been cleared to return to duty yet and I often saw them sitting together in the weak sunlight watching the practice field.

Know that idleness could be harder then activity, Joshua set them to fixing and cleaning guns and other small tasks. Starting Ash on physical therapy for her leg and helping Mica learn to do things with one hand took plenty of time each day. The other survivors’ injuries were not as life changing, but they needed a fair degree of ongoing care as well.

One of the surviving Delvians had only a broken ankle, which I hoped would heal cleanly. At least it would if he stopped spending all his time hopping around on his crutches instead of resting. The other was healing a chest wound that had collapsed a lung and mostly slept. None of us were willing to go into the Delvian’s dorm, even escorted, so they would come to the medical unit for checkups.

Although Joshua had tended to the Delvians on the day of the battle, he handed off all of their other care to Jack and me afterwards. I couldn’t exactly blame him. He completely avoided all of them when he could. Jack and I did as well, beyond the two I had to care for. For our own safety, Jack and I always worked together when we treated one of them.

The one with the chest wound was pretty much silent, but the younger man with the broken ankle was surprisingly chatty. His name was Vincent. I’d put his ankle in a splint, instead of a cast because I didn’t want to risk him getting trench foot in the wet conditions. That meant that I generally checked the splint and sometimes adjusted it every couple of days.

One afternoon, I was sitting with him out in the courtyard. I had to poke his toes one by one with a pin to make sure he still had sensation in them. He bore the treatment with relatively good humor.

“Owe, gods doc, sometimes I think you’re just doing this for fun.”

“Fun?”

“Poking and prodding me every couple of days.”

Jack, who was making down notes on a file said, “It’s for your own good. If this break heals wrong you might walk again but you’ll never run or fight.”

“So you’ve both told me repeatedly.”

I considered the splint, frowning, “How did this get dirty again? This cloth is wet.”

“Everything is muddy, what do you expect.”

“Your foot isn’t supposed to be touching the ground at all. Have you been trying to walk.”

“What are you my mother?”

“No but I am going to have to undo the splint and put on a new one. I imagine you recall how much that hurt last time?”

“Shit. Can you at least give me something for the pain this time?”

Jack set down his pen, “No, we don’t have enough pain killers.”

Vincent frowned, “What do you mean? There’s a whole box in the dorm.”

I began to undo the bandages that held the splint together. “Yes, well your Lieutenant hasn’t exactly offered to share those with us unless I fuck him.”

Lieutenant Sharps failed offer to buy my favors was common knowledge at that point. In light of what had happened to Joshua, it was also the least of the issues between our two groups.

Vincent looked embarrassed. At least he did before he had to bite his lip to not cry out as I set about the very painful process of undoing his splint, cleaning his leg and then re-doing it. He did manage a few words, probably as much to distract himself from what was happening as anything else.

“Listen, for what it is worth. I don’t think he realized what an insult that was. It’s not like they briefed any of us on how important shield-maidens are to Terra Nuevans.”

Jack snorted, “I imagine you all do now though.”

“Yes. Shit, ouch. Ouch!” He took a wavering breath; “Yea, we get it. Companions are only for their own units. Seriously listen though. I think that whole thing was a misunderstanding. Most Delvian bases have a small brothel, and its normal for any unit that’s posted there, even temporarily, to use it. Traditionally unit commanders are supposed to give some extra supplies to the base in exchange, and soldiers always give the whores some cigarettes or stuff after they fuck them. All of us were originally kind of confused why your units weren’t willing to share. Owe.”

He gave me an accusatory look at I finished knotting the bandage that held the splint. I shrugged and reached into my kit for a bottle, shaking four white pills out into my palm.

“Here, take these. They are pretty weak as painkillers go, but they’ll keep the inflammation down.”

“Thanks.”

Jack watched the whole exchanged with a frown, “Ok, so I get the whole trying to offers meds for sex things was a faux pas by your commander. That doesn’t exactly explain what happened to Joshua. You can’t explain away violent rape as a cultural misunderstanding.”

Vincent winced, “I know it doesn’t mean anything for me to say it, but those three acted alone. The rest of the unit didn’t have a damn thing to do with what happened.”

I watched him carefully; “You lot didn’t know you had rapists in your midst? They never said anything or bragged about what they were going to do before it happened?”

He bit his lip nervously, “I mean, not exactly. I never liked John, Don, and Frank. Something about them always seemed off. I heard a rumor once that they’d done something really bad to a whore at their last base, but that was like third hand. I guess they joked about wanting to…” He paused choosing his words carefully, “Ok, so they did joke that they wanted to fuck a companion but it was not like they went and told everyone they were planning to grab your friend. Now they are all dead for what they did, so what does it matter? You lot got your revenge.”

“Revenge doesn’t undo what happened,” I told him as I held out a water canteen. “Go on, take all of the pills now. I don’t want your ankle swelling in the new splint.”

He accepted the water and threw back the pills.

“What do you want me to say? My unit had some bad people in it. Your side probably does too. Last month can’t have been the first time someone was raped in a Terra Nuevan trench during this war.”

He was more right then he knew. I had no answer, so instead I said, “Do you think you can get back to your dorm alright on your crutches or do you want Jack and me to help you.”

“I think I can manage.”

All the same we helped him get back up on his good leg and get the crutches under his arms. Before he started back he paused, “I don’t know if I’ve said it. But I am grateful that you two are still helping me, after everything that has happened between our groups. I know you don’t have to, and I appreciate it.”

Jack gave him a nod and the Devian set off on his slow hopping way.

When he was gone Jack said, “Well I guess at least one of them isn’t a complete asshole.”

“That’s something at least,” I admitted.

 

Luca did not appear when her night came. I knew I should probably just get some sleep but I felt too restless. I considered going out into the dorm, but if she was out there that might be awkward. And if I was with the unit, I would have to be on, paying attention to them, taking care of them.

Instead I grabbed my medical kit and my coat. I could go do some inventory and restocking. I noticed Jess reading a tablet in her bunk. “Hey Jess, can you walk me to the medical unit?”

She set down her tablet, “Sure.”

It was a quiet walk. One thing I liked about Jess was that she never felt the need to talk when there was nothing to say. I had expected the field hospital to be empty, and was more than a little surprised to see a light on.

A figure moved in the shadow outside the door and Jess instantly fell into a fighting stance.

“It’s just me,” said Mark.

Jess instantly relaxed. “What are you doing here?”

“Joshua wanted to do inventory. Sergeant Bernard said Joshua’s never supposed to go anywhere alone, so I came with him. Joshua got annoyed when I followed him into the building and told me to watch the door.”

Jess seemed to pick up on what all of that meant. “I’ll watch the door with you then.” She glanced at me, “Unless you want to go somewhere else Kate. You wanted time alone right?”

For a GES she was very perceptive. I gave her a nod. “Here is fine. I’ll help Joshua with the inventory unless he tells me to go away.”

I stepped into the dim light of the medical unit. We had scrubbed it as much as we could, and now it smelled of bleach instead of blood. I found Joshua sitting in one of the unit’s only chairs, a flask absently balanced on his knee.

“Hey you.” I said softly, before dragging over another chair. “You getting drunk without me?”

He handed me the flask without looking up and I took it. “Did Bernard send you to check on me?”

“No, I was just looking to find somewhere quiet.” I took a sip.

“Shouldn’t you be seeing to someone in your unit?” he asked flatly.

“She didn’t show up.”

“Same.” He took the flask back and too a deep drink.

I frowned, “You started your list again?”

He nodded, “I tried. I mean I put it up on the wall. I put it up a week ago. No one’s come, not even just to sleep.”

“They probably want to give you time to heal.”

He gave me an almost condescending look, “most of what I do is with my mouth and hands and those are fine.”

“I meant emotionally.”

He gave a bitter laugh. “We are in the middle of a war zone, I can’t wait the months or years it will take for the nightmares to stop before I can start taking care of my unit again.”

“You can give yourself at least a full month.”

“I don’t need a month. I need things to go back to normal and I need that now.”

“We don’t exactly live normal lives Joshua.”

“I know that. I just…I’m just so sick of everyone treating me like I’m made of glass. I was raped. I survived. Now everyone is afraid to touch me. I haven’t even had a fucking hug since it happened.”

I leaned over and hugged him around the shoulders. He stiffened for a moment and then relaxed.

“Thanks.”

“Your welcome.”

We sat for a bit longer. “I know you don’t like it Joshua, but what happened hurt your unit too. They are probably scared of re-traumatizing you.”

“Being left alone is worse.” He brought the flask back to his lips. “I hadn’t realized until this happened, but I don’t sleep well on my own. There has been a man in my bed almost every night for over a decade. I don’t know how to feel safe without the sound of someone else breathing.”

“If it would help, Jack or I could hold you some nights.”

“You both have your own units to worry about.”

“You are our fellow companion, and a friend. We worry about you too.”

“I don’t want anyone to worry about me.” His voice was bitter as sorghum.

“No, but you do spend all of your time worrying about others.”

That got me the ghost of a smile. He leaned back against my arm.

“The fuck am I going to do Kate? It’s not like I can just ask someone from my unit to come hold me.”

“Why not?”

“You and I both know we can’t show our units that much weakness.”

I wasn’t completely sure I agreed with that, but I let it go. “Ask Bernard then. If there is one person in our units that we don’t always have to be strong for, it is our commanders.”

“He’s the only one who actually showed up for his night, and do you know what he did?” Joshua didn’t wait for an answer, “He sat with his back against the wall. He said he was there and I was safe and I should try to sleep. The fucking bastards didn’t even come near the bed. He was so damn ashamed of me he wouldn’t even hold my gaze.”

“Did you ask him to hold you?”

“No.”

“Listen Joshua. Whatever is going on, I’m pretty sure the only thing he’s ashamed of is himself for not protecting you. He told me as much when he helped me watch over you the night it happened.”

“That does sound like him. It’s still dumb. He couldn’t have protected me. None of the unit could have.”

“You know that. He probably knows it logically as well. That doesn’t change how anyone feels.”

“Its fucked up is what it is.”

“Yep.”

“Can we talk about anything other than my problems for a bit?”

“Of course.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey folks, so this is where I got helleva stuck the first time I tried to write this. This chapter brings us to the end of all the fully written connected chapters I have completed.
> 
> I’m really not sure how to end this thing and I’m open to ideas and suggestions. I’m also going to share with you all the potential ideas I’ve had for an ending. If you’ve followed the story this far, I’d love to hear your thoughts and input on direction.
> 
> Possible endings
> 
> 1.Kate is captured by the Varcians.
> 
> -The trench falls and Kate is captured as prisoner of war. Her captors realize she’s a shield maiden and she end up presented to a general as essentially a sex slave. She gets taken back to Varcia.
> 
> -I’ve actually written a couple chapters for this idea and decided it was too damn dark to keep going with. It’s also sort of a dead end because I still couldn’t figure out a way for her to escape Varcia other than maybe being given back in a prisoner exchange or something.
> 
> 2\. All Quiet on the Western Front esque ending but without killing off Kate
> 
> -I probably won’t write this idea either, but one possible ending would be that the trench falls and Kate is on of the only survivors. The plot would then follow her return to Terra Nueva and essentially end with her using her story to begin work as an anti-war activists
> 
> 3.Major retreat
> 
> -This might be one of the more likely plot lines. The trench would fall and the unit would have to retreat over hostile territory, losing most of the unit in the retreat. Kate survives to get back to Terra Nueva along with at least one member of the unit. She ends up in a position to publicly denounce the war and she does.
> 
> 4\. A non conclusive ending/ Nothing changes just repeats
> 
> -A retreat where most of the unit survives. The story ends with the unit returning to Terra Nueva. The final chapters would mostly focus on Kate helping the unit deal with their PTSD before they go back out into the field. The final scene would be Kate meeting several new members of the unit and trying to figure out how to prepare them for what they are about to head into.
> 
> 5\. Christmas truce esque endings
> 
> -Kate somehow ends up helping facilitate a brief pause in hostilities. Maybe something like she arranges a brief cease fire and goes out with a white flag to retrieve an injured woman from no man’s land or something like that. This causes a landslide effect of both sides briefly pausing their fight to find injured and bury bodies. As it is a major holiday for both cultures and the two sides agree to a day of rest.
> 
> -Either the truce ends and the story finishes with the war resuming or the cease fire comes a day before one of the planets unexpected surrender and the end of the war
> 
> 6\. Conclude with a set up for a second book
> 
> -Story ends with the entire unit being captured alive or having to surrender when the trench falls and being thrown into a POW camp. This would set up a second book that would follow what happens to the unit there and probably be kind of “The Great Escape esque)


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey folks, this is my first attempt at writing a new chapter for this story in a very long time. It's short and doesn't move the plot along much but hopefully writing it has helped me knock off some cobwebs so I can get back to actually finishing this thing.

The next evening after dinner I sought out Marcus. He and Jess were sparring at the edge of the practice field. Watching them was awe inspiring. No natural born human could have moved with the raw grace and precision that they did. Jess was wearing only a sports bra and pants cut above the knees. The sight of her muscles alone could have carried any woman through a lonely night.

For the first time since before the unit went through the shield, I felt a spark of real longing. It was sharp and honest and untinged by grief. One thing I had come to understand, not long after I had become a companion, was the difference between simply being able to respond to a woman’s touch and truly wanting her.

I cared for all the women in my unit, I found all of them desirable, but that didn’t change the fact that I was expected to have sex nearly every night.  I had learned how to be an attentive lover even when I was tired or distracted. I had to put the needs of the woman I was taking care of each night before my own.

Beyond just sex, I spent so much time holding women, listening to their fears, using my words and the warmth of my arms to give comfort. I knew that as the unit companion I couldn’t ask anyone to do the same for me. Sarge would have gladly listened but I didn’t dare weigh her down with anything heavier than what she already carried.

Sometimes though, often in moments when I saw Jess in motion or Hallie laughing or Sarge looking at me with that kind sad gaze of hers or simply Ash smiling, I felt something deeper, fiercer, stronger. Sometimes I wondered what it would be like to just seize on that feeling, pursue purely the desires of my body and needs of my heart. What would it be like to ask as much back from a woman as I gave, to be taken care of as much as to care?

I knew what love looked like. I saw how it strengthened the couples in my unit. Stella and Cali constantly drew strength for each other, patiently supporting each other. Gillie and Sarah were younger, and they fought a lot, but their relationship seemed to bring them joy. I had also seen how losing the woman she loved had broken Harper.

I was returned to the present when Marcus finally ended the fight, using her longer reach to finally get a grip on Jess and send her tumbling. No sooner had he thrown her than he was helping her back up.  

Neither noticed me until they were heading back over to the bench where they had left their water bottles.

“Hi Kate,” said Jess when she saw me. “Can I help you with something?” She’d come a long way with her verbal manners. When she’d first arrived she’d have probably bluntly asked me what I required.

“I just need a word with Marcus.”

Marcus got an odd look on his face. “Would it be alright if Jess listened? She is better at understanding things than I am. You often confuse me but Jess can likely explain to me what you mean.”

He was still working on his social graces but truth be told, honesty seemed to generally serve him well enough.

Once Alex had made the mistake of teasingly asking him what he liked about Sergeant Cooper. With a straight face he had said. “I like her hips and her breasts and her face, especially the way she shows her teeth when she smiles. When I see her teeth I know she is happy, unless she’s yelling, then I know she’s angry.” It was either the most romantic or bizarre thing everyone in the barracks had ever heard.

“What did you want to talk to Marcus about?” asked Jess. She had her head very slightly tilted the way she did when she was in a situation she couldn’t read. While most people found themselves in confusing situations fairly often, Jess actually physically showed her uncertainty more than most.

I felt oddly put on the spot. I motioned all of us to sit on the bench. It creaked ominously. It was mostly made from iron scraps from the destroyed mess hall. While it could have easily supported me, either GES probably weighed twice as much as me, so all three of us put a bit of at strain on the poorly welded metal.

“It’s about Joshua. I think you can help him.”

Marcus looked at me blankly. “Does he require assistance with the infirmary? I have approximately forty hours of emergency medical training.”

“No. I mean I think you can comfort him.”

The GES stared at me.

I took a slow breath trying to figure out how to explain what I meant.  I was starting to think this was a bad idea. “Do you understand what happened to him before the units went through the shield? What the three Delvians did.”

He looked away. “Yes. I know what rape is. It has been explained to me. The three Delvians raped Joshua. He killed one. The other two were executed.”

I was very glad that I didn’t have to explain that part. “And do you understand what emotional pain is?”

“That has been explained to me as well. Psychological distress can follow a traumatic incident. Luke told me that Joshua keeps cleaning guns and not talking to anyone because that is how he is processing the trauma of having been raped. I am unclear why cleaning the guns helps but Luke told me to shut up when I said that.”

That sounded about right. “Do you want to help him feel better?”

He tilted his head in an almost identical motion to the one Jess made so often. “I am not a therapist. I do not think I can help him unless assisting him in cleaning guns can alleviate his psychological pain.”

“That might actually.”

“You want me to go clean guns with Joshua?”

“Yes. More than that I think you should start going to his room on your assigned night and maybe on some that aren't yours as well if he doesn’t tell you to go away. Keep him company and sleep with him.” Joshua had never taken Marcus off the schedule, even if he knew he wouldn’t show up, since it meant he got a chance to sleep.

“I do not understand. I have no desire to have sex with him and even if I did I do not think that would help him.”

“Not that. I mean literally sleep with him, like sleep in the same bed.”

“That will make him feel better?”

Jess finally stepped in. “I think Kate means that Joshua needs company and non sexual touch because he is lonely and vulnerable.”

Joshua looked at her. “Why is she asking me to help him though? I am not good at this kind of emotional thing.”

“Actually you're probably the best for this,” I said. “You are the only member of your unit he’s never had sex with. He’ll know you have no expectations. That you are just there to help.”

He was still frowning, “And just lying next to him will do that? Shouldn’t he just come sleep in the dorm if sleeping near others eases emotional pain?”

“It’s a bit more complicated than that.” I was starting to wonder if this wasn’t such a good idea. “Do you think you could hold him?”

“Hold?”

Jess spoke again. “Like what you told me you do with Captain Cooper after after you have sex with her.”

“Have sex again? That is usually what she and I do after the first time.”

I was starting to think he was being deliberately dense.

“No,” said Jess starting to get a little annoyed with him. “More like lying still and hugging. You said that sometimes you wrap your arms around Sergeant Cooper and she curls against you. Do that with Joshua, except fully clothed.” It was funny hearing Jess explain cuddling. I had been something I taught her how to do.To further emphasized her point, she leaned over to wrap her arms around my middle and pull me against herself. “That but lying down.”

“Ah, that is easy I can do that. How do I get Joshua to lie down though? He never even sits still anymore?”

I wanted to face palm but I knew I needed to give him an honest answer. “Use your words. Ask him to hold you.”

“So I should ask him to do something for me that he actually needs for himself?” 

“Yes, that exactly.”

“Alright.” He didn’t look like he understood exactly but he’d clearly accepted a while ago that there were just going to be things he wasn’t going to get.

Once he had gone Jess and I sat for a bit more. It felt nice to have her arms around me. The start that lit the moon was just starting to set, a golden ball on the horizon.

She nuzzled at my ear. “You smell good, like flavored porridge or cookies.”

I guess that would be her reference point for the smell of vanilla. I’d found a small bottle of the artificial stuff in the food boxes in the shed. We didn’t really have the ability or supplies to bake anything so I’d commandeered it as perfume. A tiny dab behind my ears was enough to entrance pretty much any woman in my unit. Jess must have had a very good sense of smell though because I’d dabbed on the vanilla two nights before and couldn’t smell it any longer myself.

When she kissed the nape of my neck I felt a shiver run through me. She noticed. She had always been a quick learner where matters of touch were concerned. She kissed my neck again and pulled me closer. She didn’t dare do more, outside of assigned nights, further tumbles were my right alone to offer.

I ached to sink into the feeling of her touch. To just feel pleasure and not be responsible for anyone for a little while. If it wasn’t her night, then I could just ask for what I wanted.

“Come back to my room,” I said softly.

“It’s not my night.”

“There is time before the second watch. I mean, if you want to,” I usually asked women not to come to me before the start of the second watch, that gave me a little time to socialize with the unit or just see to other things before withdrawing to my room for the evening.

I turned my head to look at her over my shoulder when she didn’t answer me immediately.

So much hunger filled those beautiful blue eyes. I wanted to lose myself in them.

I kissed her, at least I tried, the angle was awkward.

As soon as we pulled apart, we crossed back through the trenches and into the mostly empty dormitory and my room. I led her towards the bed, pulling her down over me. We kissed frantically, tugging at each others clothes.   

She had my shirt and bra over my head quick enough, her hot mouth against a breast. I gasped and tugged at her hair guiding her lower. She got my pants open and I raised my hips to push them down.  

As usual, she proved very talented at putting her tongue to non verbal uses. I bit my lip to not cry out. She’d gotten very good at knowing when to use the tip of her tongue and when the flat, when to lick and when to suck. Clearly she’d been getting plenty of practice.

She brought me to the edge very quickly. I was so close and yet not quite there.

“Fingers, please fingers,”

She obeyed with two and then three. She replaced her mouth with her thumb against my clit so that she could crawl up and kiss me with my own essence on her lips.

“Harder,”I managed breathlessly as she began to fuck me.

She had such wonderfully strong hands but she was always so achingly careful, as if she feared I would shatter in hear arms. I knew I seemed very small to her but I was a grown woman and not made of glass.

“I mean it, harder.”

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You won’t. Truly you won’t.” I nipped at her ear and she did everything I asked of  her. Gods I think I saw stars behind my eyes as she moved those perfect fingers inside of me. “Yes, yes, faster, yes, ah!”

My entire body tensed as I arched against her fingers. For one beautiful instant all I knew was sensation. I had no fears, no worries, not duties to succeed or fail in. I slumped back onto the bed, muscles loose and easy. Jess stretched out, pulling me into her arms. The warmth of her body against my own, the sure way she held me, it all felt wonderful.

And then the curtain swished back. “Hey, I know I’m early but…” Hallie forgot whatever she was going to say next as she took in the sight of her half naked lover holding my naked and sated form. Hallie's handsome scarred face was an odd mix of confusion, desire, and something else more complicated. She tried to retreat.

“I’ll, um come back later.”

I sat up, quickly drawing the blanket around my nakedness. “Wait.”

She did.

So much for taking a moment for my own pleasure. Even if I had not technically done anything wrong I still needed to make sure I hadn’t harmed Jess and Hallie’s relationship or my friendship with either of them. I hoped this wasn’t going to bring up the memory of the time when I slept with Alex before Hallie, back when I was still supposed to be keeping an order.

Hallie flushed nearly crimson and came to sit on the edge of the bed when I motioned her closer. Jess had her head tilted and was looking back and forth between us uncertainly.

“I didn’t get the night wrong did I?” asked Hallie softly.

“No you were just early. It’s alright really.”

She spoke in one breath. “I didn’t...I didn’t mean to intrude Kate. There was no scarf on the hook. I thought you were alone.” Apparently she was going to ignore the GES in the room.

I took a breath. “Don’t apologize, I forgot to put out the scarf.”

Unfortunately Jess felt the need to add, “we were distracted.”

Hallie looked to be in some odd place between laughing, crying and just shrugging the whole thing off.

I knew I’d have to say all the hard stuff. “Hallie,” I said as gently as I could. “Are you upset?”

“Why would I be upset?” she said quickly.

“Because I slept with Jess at a time that was not her night.” It occurred to me that it might have been a good idea to actually check with Jess what the rules of her relationship with Hallie were before I invited her into my bed.

She looked away. “Jess is free to do what she wants and I have no right to complain what you do before my night starts.” Her entire body radiated tension.

Jess crawled over to her, reaching for her lovers face. Very softly she said, “Hallie, have I made a mistake? You never said I was not supposed to sleep with other women. Was this something non verbal that I was supposed to understand?”

I wondered if I should leave them to talk but I was naked and my clothes were scattered. I didn’t want to make things more awkward by rooting around for my shirt.

“No, it’s fine really.” Hallie kept her eyes down.

Jess tilted Hallie's chin up with her palm. “I think you are doing the thing you do where your words and your feelings do not match. You know I am bad at understanding what you mean when you do that.”

“Do...do you want her more than me? Are you just sleeping with me because I’m convenient and willing? Do you actually just want someone who is sweet and pretty like Kate?”

Hallie shook her head. “No, I am sleeping with you because I choose you and you choose me. I want you more than any other woman in this unit.”

“But I’m scarred and lanky and often mean.”

“I know and like you for exactly who you are. Your scars show that you were strong enough to survive blue fever. I like how your body is tough and muscled, it shows how much you train. I do not think you are mean, just very honest.”

“You’ve never said that.”

“I did not know I needed to.”

That could have been a perfect ending to the matter but Hallies insecurities were still clearly gnawing at her. “But you slept with her when it wasn’t your night. Am I not enough as a lover?”

Jess let go of her lover’s face and sat back to consider her. “Is one lover supposed to be?”

“Do you want other lovers?”

“When you say lover, do you mean just a woman I have sex with or one I have a deep emotional connection with?”

“I don’t know!” Hallie threw her hands up in the air.

“I only love you,” her statement came so far out of left field that Hallie and I both stared at her.

“You love me?”

“Yes. I thought you knew. Do you not love me?”

“Of course I love you, you idiot.”

In a romance novel, I suppose they would have kissed or something then. Instead they just sort of blinked at each other.

They might have kept doing that for a while if I had not cleared my throat. “Listen, you two can have the room for the night, I’ll go sleep in the dorm.”

Hallie shook her head as if coming out of daze. “No, it is your room. We’ll just go.”

Oddly enough it ended up being Jess who suggested the threesome. “You do not still want your night with Kate?”

“Um.” Hallie looked a bit overwhelmed.

“I know you desire her, you never miss your nights and you have described her as ‘tiny and adorable and very good with her hands.”

If possible, Hallie flushed even redder.

Jess looked at me. “If I give up my night next week can I share Hallies tonight?”

“Yes of course, if that is what you both want.”

And soon enough we had Hallie on her back between us. I ducked down between her legs as Jess kissed and touched her.

I got her off once with my mouth and then got out of the way so Jess could fuck her with her hands. I lay beside them and watched as Jess managed to get Hallie to make progressively louder sounds.

When Hallie caught her breath, she and I touched Jess together. The GES absolutely loved that. I rubbed her clit as Hallie fingered her and we both took turns kissing her. She came very quickly but then again she’d probably been on edge since she’d gotten me off some time ago.

It didn’t take Jess long to recover and soon enough she was reaching for Hallie. They forgot all about me then as they made love as if they were re-learning each other. After they were done, Hallie rolled over once to kiss me goodnight and then snuggled back against Jess to sleep. Jess’s own breathing soon grew even and peaceful.

I did not expect the feeling of loneliness to hit me as hard as it did then. I should have just closed my eyes and gone to sleep. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t ever bedded a couple before and  I knew more or less what to expect. Harper and Nix had never held me after sex, they’d always been too caught up in each other. When I lay with Stella and Cali, Stella would always go to sleep in the circle of Cali’s arms but pull me against herself. Only Sarah and Millie had ever asked me to sleep between them.

Jess and Hallie had shown me no unkindness or neglect and yet seeing them curled up together made me feel as cold as the match girl in that old book of fairy tales. I wanted what they had. Admitting that to myself just deepened the feeling until I felt as if I couldn’t breath.

I slipped from my own bed and tugged on a shirt and pants before padding barefoot into the sleeping dorm.

Ash was asleep when I gently tugged back the little curtain she’d hung over her wall sconce and touched her shoulder, “can I sleep with you?”

She blinked against the dim light of the spirit lamps. “Kate? Is everything alright?”

“Yea, I’m just cold. Can I lie down with you?”

“Of course." She tugged back the blanket and scooted back against the wall to make room. I slipped beneath the warmth of her bedding. The stone slab beneath her blankets was hard but I didn’t really care.

She pulled me into her strong arms and I settled against her, resting my head on her chest. When I listened hard enough I could hear her heartbeat. Some of the knot of hurt inside of me began to ease. I slept deeply and dreamed of a vast and open blue sky.


	18. Chapter 18

Joshua gave me a thoughtful look when he sat down next to me at breakfast the next day. 

“Did you tell Marcus I needed a hug?”

“Something like that.” I watched him carefully. I thought the GES had understood me but maybe he hadn’t. “Should I not have?”

He shrugged. “Nah, it’s fine.”

“Did it help?” 

“A little, yea.” It seemed to me that the circles under his eyes weren’t as deep as they had been lately, maybe he’d actually been able to sleep through the night.  

And that was all he ever said about it. Every day when I saw him, I hugged him and he didn’t push me away. Every morning the tension in his body felt a bit less and slowly, day by day, it seemed to me that his old smile was returning. 

 

Over the next couple weeks I tried to pay as much attention to Harper and Mica as I could. I had already adjusted the schedule to give them additional nights and no one questioned that, it was my right as a companion to do what I thought was necessary to take care of women in my unit. 

After the funeral, Harper had pretty much stopped talking. She still came to her nights but she just pulled me into her arms, buried her face in my hair and lay still. She never even cried after that first afternoon at the graveside. 

She pulled away from everyone. Even Tali, who was one of her closest friends, couldn’t get through to her. She seemed to spend a lot of time alone in the shield and tech shed. With Nix gone, maintaining the bases shields and other systems fell primarily to her and a technician in Joshua’s unit. 

I started to worry about how much time she spent alone in the shed, so most days I would go spend an hour or two with her there. At first she told me to go away, then she got annoyed and ignored me, and finally she gave up and started letting me help her fix things. I wasn’t sure if handing her wrenches in the stuffy little shed was helping but I had to hope. 

Mica talked a lot, although almost solely with me. She came to her nights and even if she was still physically healing and in a good bit of pain, she wanted me desperately. I think sex helped her feel like there was something she could still do, was even still good at. We had to make adjustments but we managed. 

Most of her daily life was a constant series of frustrations, losing her dominant arm made nearly every daily task an almost insurmountable challenge. She couldn’t hold a rifle with one hand, which meant she couldn’t stand guard duty or patrol the trench line. She was still too clumsy with her other hand to even really help cook or fix things. As she put it, “I can’t even properly hold a shovel to dig a fucking drainage ditch!”

Somewhat to my surprise, one of the older soldiers in Joshua’s unit, Luke, asked her to start helping him in the communications shed. He began to teach her how to help him decode messages we got from central command. I think it helped her feel useful again. There was no question she’d get a medical discharge if we could ever get her back to central command and then Terra Nueva, but we had no idea when that would be. For some reason, all non essential movement of troops and goods had stopped since my unit went through the shield. 

Oddly enough, I ended up worrying about Luca as much as Mica. Luca stopped coming to her nights and got nearly as quiet as Harper. When she missed a second night I went to find her. She was leaning against the storage shed wall smoking a cigarette. I had no idea where she’d gotten it unless she’d been saving some since Terra Nueva. Cigarettes weren’t included in our rations. Considering how long most units spend deployed, even if someone smoked they ran out of cigarettes pretty quickly.

She frowned into the dim light that spilled out from the dorm as I approached but offered no protest as I leaned against the wall next to her. 

“So did I start snoring lately or something?” 

She took a while to reply. “It’s not personal Kate. Apparently I’m just the one woman in this bloody unit who isn’t made horn by stress and worry.”

“You can also come to talk or just sleep. You wouldn’t be the first.” 

“I don’t want to talk and I haven’t exactly been sleeping lately.” 

“I’m okay with sitting in awkward silence as well.”  

She finally turned her head to look at me. “When did you get so bold.”

“Since I became shield maiden to an entire unit of stubborn as hell space marines.”

“Fair enough.” 

We stayed as we were for a time. The air grew chiller as the evening settled in properly. Her cigarette burned down to stub and she crushed it under her boot. She didn’t seem to have another. 

“You can stand out here with me until your tits freeze off but I’m still not going to talk.”

“Your tits will freeze too.” 

Eventually, when we both started to shiver she let out an aggrieved sigh and went back inside. She went to her own bunk and I didn’t press her.

The next night, before second watch, I went looking for her again. I found her in the same spot with another cigarette.

“You again?”

“Yea me,” I leaned against the wall and popped a hard candy into my mouth. My poker playing abilities had been improving and I didn’t lose my entire candy ration each month anymore. 

We managed a good hour of shivering before she said. “Isn’t it someone’s night?”

“Sarge’s, but she’ll understand.”

“More likely she’ll tell you she understands and call me a frozen idiot.” 

“All the same I’ll go in when you do.”

We repeated the exercise the next night.

“Who’s time am I wasting now,” she grumbled eventually.

“No one but mine at the moment. In about five minutes it will be Cali and Stella’s. They’ll understand.” 

“More likely Stella will try to use this as an excuse to ask how I’m doing and Cali will frown at me the way she does when she’s worried.” 

“They care about you, so do I.”

“What part of me wanting to be left alone do you not get?”

“I’m sure it is what you want, if you can convince me that it is what you need as well, I’ll let you be.” 

She said nothing in response to that, although we went back in soon after.

I didn’t give up on my tactic. 

“You are bloody stubborn.” She told me the next evening. She seemed to have run out of cigarettes. 

I offered her a candy and she took it. We stood and shivered and ate the last of my candy ration. 

When the moon peeked over the horizon she asked “So who’s time am I about to start leaching. 

“Your sister’s.” 

She tensed as if I’d struck her. “Go back inside Kate. She needs you a hell of a lot more than I do.”

“I’m not so certain about that.” 

“She lost her damn arm. I don’t have a scratch on me, I’m fine.”

“You don’t seem fine.”

“The fuck do you want from me!” 

“To make sure you’re not hurting alone.” 

“I’m not hurting.” 

“Yes you are.” I let out a breath into the cold air. “Listen, you don’t have to talk to me, just talk to someone. I don’t know everything that’s going on in your head right now but you are avoiding everyone, Mica included and she needs you. That has got to stop.”

“Fuck you!” I couldn’t see her face very well in the dark but I had the distinctive feeling she’d bared her teeth.  

I stayed as I was, “You passed up your chance to do that a couple nights ago.” 

“You! You!” She stopped herself before she let whatever insult that had risen to her lips escape. She turned sharply and stormed inside.

I was reading a medical text on my tablet out by the sparing field the next day when she came and sat beside me on the metal bench. “You want me to talk, fine I’ll talk if you will just leave me the hell alone.”

“Luca, listen. I...” 

She cut me off before I could say anything more. “Mica got hurt, she lost her fucking arm because she was protecting me. She shoved me down when the shell went off. She shielded me!” 

She took a slow ragged breath, her dark eyes dared me to say anything. 

Wisely, I didn’t. 

“Our whole lives, all we’ve ever really had was each other. Our mother bled to death giving birth to us in a charity hospital. Our father tried but he was a drunk at the best of times and Mica and I pretty much had to raise ourselves. All those years growing up hungry and filthy in the slums we had each other’s backs and that was more than most slum rats had. We lied about our ages and joined the marines when we were still too young because they said they’d feed us. 

We made it through basic, got through all these years whole and unharmed. Hell we were two of the only women in our unit who survived Broken Shield without a scratch. Some part of me, some stupid part of me started to believe that as long as we were together nothing could hurt us. I’m a goddamn idiot. I was a second to slow in diving into the mud and she paid the price.”

I doubted a second would have mattered but I didn’t say that. 

She covered her face. “And do you want to know the really fucked up bit? More than anything, more than worrying about her being in pain or how she’s going to survive with one arm and a half pension back on Terra Nueva, I’m worried about myself. I can’t sleep because I have no idea how I can face this hell without my sister at my side. She’s the one who’s hurt and I’m the selfish idiot who’s sick with fear.” 

“She’s scared too,” I normally would not tell one woman in my unit what another had told me within the walls of my small room but in this case I made an exception. 

“What?”

“She’s scared of going back to Terra Nueva without you. She’s worried she’s being selfish worrying about herself when you’ll be the one still in an active war zone.” 

She slumped. “She really said that?”

“Yes.”

“I guess I should probably talk to her shouldn’t I?”

“Yea.” I turned my tablet in my hands. “By the way, I feel like I should probably point out that neither or you are selfish. You’re allowed to be both afraid for yourselves and each other.”

She nodded and then to my surprise took my hand, giving it a breath squeeze. “Thanks kid. Your a stubborn as Mary ever was and I guess that’s a good thing.”

Over the next couple days I started to see the two sisters in each other’s company again and gradually they even began to interact more with the rest of the unit. Mica was still frustrated and in pain half the time and Luca remained fairly elusive but they both seemed to be doing a bit better.

 

During those same weeks I ended up spending more and more time with Ash. Her leg had healed enough that she could begin more serious physical therapy. She could walk on her own but she was likely going to carry a slight limp for the rest of her life. In the past, at least according to Joshua, her injury should have earned her a trip back to Terra Nueva and possible a medical discharge if she never regained the ability to run. That wasn’t going to happen now, even if she could have been sent back. One of the older members of Joshua’s unti had actually been sent into the field with a very similar injury.

To her credit Ash didn’t complain, even when I could tell she was in pain. We usually spent about an hour each day during the warmest part of the afternoon on the one grassy section of the sparring field. We would drag out a blanket and I would guide her through her exercises.  

The bit where she had to extend and retract her leg against an elastic tension band always left her pale and exhausted. I always wanted to tell her she could stop but I knew she wouldn’t get better if she did.

“Come one just five more.”

“Not sure I can.”

“For me, please.” I’d learned that tactic worked very well with her, with most of my unit really. 

She gritted her teeth and managed three, her body starting to tremble. 

“Kate…”

“Do the last two and I’ll kiss you.” 

Miraculously, she managed before slumping onto the blanket. As soon as she caught her breath I stretched out beside her and gave her a proper kiss. 

“No fair bribing me,” she said with a warm smile, looking up at me with those big blue eyes of hers. 

“Awe you poor thing, you got a kiss for doing something for your own good.”

“Well, when you put it like that.”

I tapped her lightly on the nose, “Be nice to me or I’ll make you do your physical therapy with Joshua instead.”

She made a face, scrunching up her nose adorably. “Ugh, as far as I can tell he just yells at people.”

“Exactly.” 

We settled back onto the blanket, enjoying the clear blue sky that stretched above us. It was the first time in months that it hadn’t been cloudy and that wasn’t likely to last.

Ash sat up and reached for her discarded jacket to retrieve something wrapped in brown paper from a pocket.  

“Hey Kate,”

“Yea?”

“Is it okay if I give you a gift, even if it isn’t my night? I just want to thank you for helping me with my leg and everything.”

That confused me a bit. “Ash, you can give me a gift whenever you want. There are no rules for that.”

Her hands trembled as she held out the paper. “I...I made this for you.”

I took it and slowly unwrapped the paper to find a small flower made of welded metal. “It’s beautiful, is it a flower?”

“It’s supposed to be a rose, except they don’t grow here. No flowers grow in the trenches at all but I wanted to give you a flower, so I got Harper to help me make this for you. She let me use Nix’s old soldering iron.”

The edges were metal and nearly cut my fingers but I clutched at it all the same. “It’s perfect.”

In all the short years of my life no one had ever given me me a flower or any sort.  I had no idea what a rose was really supposed to look like but the painted mental thing she gave me seemed close enough. No one had given me a real gift since my mother died, except the string of beads that my first lover Maggie gave me when we were were still just girls. 

I had to do something with the metal rose, so I twisted up my hair and used the stem to hold it back. 

I had nothing to give her in thanks but myself, so I offered her that. “Come back to my bunk.” 

“I…”

I caught at her face turning her to look at me. “Do you have guard duty?”

“No,” 

“Then, if you want me, come.”

I led her by the hand back into the empty dorm and to my bed. It felt different that time, even if the mechanics were the same as any other time we had tumbled. In a way it seemed almost as if we were discovering something new and precious. I hadn’t felt that way since I had first lain with Maggie in innocence, since I reached for Jessica in the dark dormitory at the academy. Something deeper than lust sparked between Ash and me. We didn’t dare put words to it.

We took our time, as we never had before. She explored my body as if she had never touched it before, trailing her fingers across every curve and dip of my form to memorize them, kissing my skin as if it were holy. She was not the most talented woman I had ever taken to bed and yet I wanted her so desperately that I was on the point of begging before she at last brought her lips to the most intimate part of me. When I asked for her fingers, she gave me those and I came clenched against them, crying her name. I saw to her with every bit as much care. 

Dinnertime found us still tangled and I had to force myself to pull away from her. We needed to eat. We also needed to not be blindingly obvious about what we’d been up to. I pushed her from the bed, told her to go to the mess hall ahead of me. It didn’t work really, I was already late to the meal when I slunk in a few minutes after her. 

No one said anything until Mel came to my bed that evening. She was as blunt as she always was. “A smile suits you beautiful.”

“You think I’m smiling?”

“I think you’re happy about something and there ain’t a damn thing in this hellhole other than a woman worth smiling like that.”

“How do you know I’m not smiling for you?”

The hurt that filled her face then told me I’d miscalculated. “We both know I’ve not been nearly attentive enough to catch your heart lovely girl.”

I couldn’t meet her eyes although I was currently perched in her lap. “You are more than charming enough to warm my blood.”

“Am I now?” she ran a hand down my naked back and the heat of her touch made me arch against her. “You’ve not given your heart to some girl your own age?”

I think she meant to tease but it hurt. “If you had any interest in my heart you should have offered yours in exchange a long time ago.” I stole that line from a romance novel and yet oddly it seemed to fit.

She pulled me closer, “Forgive me Kate, I’m being unkind. You’ve ever right to expect better of me.”

“Show me then. Tell me what you want.” I had learned quickly that there was a strange power in demanding that women tell me what they wanted. Jack had agreed with me when I explained it to him. Joshua had seemed a bit confused by the idea. “Why would I demand a man tell me what he wanted? I can’t get most of them to shut up about what they want.”

Mel was happy enough to tell me what she wanted. “Your lips, your hands, you know what to do.”

And I did. 

She curled against me when she was sated but she still slipped from bed as soon as she thought I was asleep, much as Tali often did. I wasn’t sure why since she had slept the night a time or two. I suppose she just slept better alone.  

All the same, I still found it hard to sleep in an empty bed. I slipped from my cold blankets and went to Ash’s bunk. Any time a woman didn’t stay the night, I went to her after that. 

To my unit’s credit no one ever said anything about the mater. Even Sarge, a few nights later when she brushed her fingers against the metal rose in my braid kept her thoughts to herself. 

Jack might have been a resolute gossip, but he never asked me about it, Joshua did. I was out in the yard with him and Jack watching our units sparing when he finally brought it up. 

“So rumor has it you are madly in love with that shy blond girl.” 

Subtlety was never Joshua’s strength. I didn’t look at him. “So what if I am?” Ash and I had never put a word to what was between us but there was no point denying what it was.

“I feel like I’m obliged to offer advice, not that your likely to listen.” 

I tilted my head to look at him. “Are you seriously going to tell me what to do?” 

Beside me Jack looked a lot like he might make a similar comment in my defense but he never got the chance.” 

“No, but you’re my friend and I care about you, so I have to at least share my own lived experience.”

“Is there anything that can possible tell me that will mean more than the warmth of a woman’s arms?”

He looked at me with those tired grey eyes of his. “Do you remember how it felt to lose Sam, to lose Nix?”

“Yea.”

“Now multiply that a hundred fold.”

“I don’t understand.”

Joshua leaned back on the bench, tilting his head up in the warm afternoon sun. “I was your age the first time I fell in love, fell damn hard for a member of my unit as young and dumb as I was. His name was Stephen and he had eyes the same light green as leaves in old movies.”

“What…” I caught myself before I could say, “what happened?”

“What do you think happened?” he snapped. “Fucking idiot stepped on a mine the first time the unit went over the wall. I was there...I’d give anything to not have been.”

“Joshua…”

“Let me finish,” he snapped. “I swore that I would never set myself up to hurt like that ever again and I managed for a couple years. Over time though, a lot of my unit started paring off and seeing them made me lonely and eventually my resolve broke. John and I were quiet about things and I thought I could balance everything, being a companion to my unit and still having someone of my own.” He took a slow breath. “John was the first to die when the shield failed. I lost so many that day, but his loss tore the soul out of me. I had to piece my unit back together when I wasn’t anywhere close to whole myself.”

“The possibility of Kate loosing Ash is a stupid reason for her not to be with her.” said Jack.  

“If she can’t carry a loss and care for her unit it is a good reason.”

“You did, twice,” I said softly.

“No I didn’t!” he snapped. “I failed my unit both times. After I lost Stephen, I went numb for months. My unit had just faced real combat for the first time and I just mentally checked out.”

“I’m sure you were still there for them,” I said.

He gave me a tired look. “Fucking a man and being able to actually listen to him or offer emotional comfort aren’t the same thing.”

“The older members of your unit don’t seem to be any worse for wear now even if you took some time to grieve over a decade ago,” said Jack with a shrug.

Joshua hunched his shoulders. “They still had a right to expect better of their unit companion, and it was worse, much worse the second time. After I lost John, I just stopped paying attention and that isn’t something a companion can afford to do. I wasn’t the only man in my unit who lost someone the night the shields failed. Dan and Walter had been together since boot camp. Walter made it less that three days after Dan died before he ate his own gun. If I hadn’t been so fucking caught up in my own grief maybe I could have helped him, talked to him, hell even realized he’d gotten bad enough that I needed to take his gun away. I didn’t.” 

“You can’t blame yourself for that,” I said, “there was likely nothing you could have done.” 

“I’ll never know though will I?” 

Neither Jack nor I new how to reply. 

Joshua just shook his head, “Listen Kate, I know I can’t tell you what to do. Just don’t get distracted by this new thing with Ash alright? Make sure your still taking care of your unit, especially Harper and Mica.”

“Of course I am.” I was starting to feel defensive. 

Joshua noticed and let the subject finally drop. A few minutes later the bell for dinner rang. He stood up first, pausing to briefly press my shoulder. “The hell do I know anyway, just hang in there kid.”

Jack and I were in no rush to get the dinning hall / repurposed leaky dorm. The last food shipment had never made it and we had been reduced to dehydrated soup packets for over two weeks. 

“You haven’t got someone like Ash in your own unit do you?” 

Jack offered a smile and a shrug. “No, I couldn’t really even if I wanted to. The women of my unit have enough jealousy issues where I’m concerned as it is. If I started favoring one woman over the others someone would probably end up dead.”

“So you’ve never…”

“I’ve been in love,” he said it almost too softly for me to hear. “There was a girl at the academy, another companion. Her name was Susan. We had to sneak around but somehow we managed to never get caught, not that it would have particularly mattered if we had been. We both wrote for a while after we were deployed and then her unit got posted on Titan. You know what happened to everyone there.” 

I shuddered slightly. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s been over a year. I still miss her but it hurts a bit less every day.”  

“You’ve never talked about it,” 

He looked down at his hands. Like my own, they were clean and soft, his nails neatly trimmed. 

“I told Joshua when we first got news of Titan’s destruction. We got really drunk and he listened to me talk and he held me as I cried and that was an end to it.”

Jack always seemed so chipper, all easy smiles and jokes, I had never thought to wonder what quiet griefs he carried. We talked so much, nearly constantly about our units, and yet we seldom really did about ourselves and the short lives we’d led before we came to Kepler. How well did we really know each other?

“You want a hug?” I couldn’t find any words that would actually help but hugs usually seemed to.

He blinked at me, “yea.”

I put an arm around him and we sat for a bit longer in the fading light of day. I’d had few real friends before and even if our friendship was still growing, I was glad for it. 

 

Had I known then how little time I had left with my unit, I would have treasured every moment. We had nearly a month and a half of relative peace before orders came down the pipeline to go back through the shield. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi folks, I know this was another chapter of not a lot happening. I just wanted to make sure I tied up all loose threads before moving into the concluding chapters. I've decided which ending I'm going to write and hope it ends up being a satisfactory. I'm going to use a modified version of the third ending option, the retreat plot line. I'll be trying to publish fairly regularly until this thing is done so I don't loose momentum. 
> 
> As always, your comments and input are much appreciated. I really never would have started properly working on this story again if not for all your kind advice and feedback.


	19. Chapter 19

When the orders to go over the top came again, the Forty-Second and Sixty-Second each each left a handful of troops to guard the trenches and all of the Fifty-Eighth went.

The Delvians left as skelton crew as well, mostly their injured from the last raid. 

Sarge decided who in our unit went and who stayed. It wasn’t until she was telling everyone their assignment that I realized why she’d asked to see my tablet with everyone’s medical and psych records the day before. I’d kept everything fairly religiously updated. I don’t know why she didn’t just ask my opinion and save herself the reading, I suppose she didn’t want me to feel responsible for potentially sending half my unit to their deaths. 

Not surprisingly she had Mica and Ash stay for medical reasons and Luca and Harper for psychological ones. She choose Mel to command the trench in her absence.

Joshua, Jack and I spent the next day getting the infirmary ready again. I didn’t realize that Joshua intended to go with his unit until he handed both Jack and me a data chip and started going over his unit’s files.

“I’ve got Marcus on two kinds of antipsychotics for his PTSD, John is on a mood stabilizer, and Frank is taking an antidepressant. John and Frank are good about taking their meds, Marcus isn’t. You’ve got to find him once a day and watch him take them or he won’t do it. Simon’s left leg is still fucked up from a bullet wound and he needs to do daily stretches. He mostly keeps up with it on his own, but it’s good to check every week or so to make sure he’s doing it right. Bernard’s left shoulder is still damaged from a shrapnel wound. He won’t do his physical therapy on his own. He’ll even try to say he’s too busy. You just have to tell him no excuses and refuse to away until you’ve watched him do the exercises.”

He was talking really fast, looking at his hands, as he sat in one of the room’s few folding chairs.

“Joshua,” said Jack gently. “They are your unit, not Kate’s or mine, why are you talking like we are about to take over their medical care?”

“Because I’m going through the shield with them this time. There is always a chance I might not make it back.”

His words knotted my stomach painfully. “I wish you would stay. Jack and I need you to help with the infirmary here.”

He shook his head, “I’ve taught you both everything I know, you can handle it. Our units need a field medic with them.”

I reached for his hand. He let me take it and squeezed back. I’d never had siblings but I wondered if this was what it felt like, the warmth of caring and the intense fear of loss. “Are you sure you’re ready for that again? If a companion needs to go, I can.”

“Or me,” said Jack. I could hear the fear in his voice. He was no coward, he’d always do what needed to be done, but he had never been the sort to fake bravado. 

“No, I’ve gone and come back before, that means I’ve got a better chance of doing it again than either of you. The first time over the wall is the most dangerous. Maybe if we keep putting it off for you two, the war will end before you two ever have to.” He didn’t sound like he really believed that last part. 

We must have both still been staring at him because he let out a frustrated breath. “I’ll be the first to admit I’ve got whole new PTSD issues but its not the battlefield that frightens me. I can do this.” 

I hoped he was right. 

 

The night before the raid I laid with Sarge again. She always came to my bed once a week and slept in my arms without fail but she hadn’t actually had sex with me since the last time the unit had gone over the top. 

She was just as tender and passionate the second time. When we were done we lay for a bit, basking in the warmth that follows really good sex. The sound of Jack’s fiddle drifted in from the next room.

She nudged me gently. “Alright, go see to the unit, I know you need to. Give me a minute and I’ll come help.”

I dressed and slipped out through my curtain. This time there was no applause but a few smirks. Maybe I hadn’t been as loud. The entire atmosphere was considerably more muted than the last time. Now that the younger soldiers knew what going over the top was actually like, their fears had become concrete.  

A few jugs were still making the rounds. Sergeant Cooper was curled up in Mark’s lap again but if she was drunk again, she wasn’t showing it. She just looked tired and scared. All the same she managed to smile and talk to her unit. I could hear Sarah and Millie having sex somewhat louder than they usually did in their alcove. I noticed Alex making out with Tali out of the corner of my eye. That was rather in character for both of them. 

“Come drink with us lovely,” said Stella from where she was leaning against Cali. They made an almost picture perfect couple, perfect for a romance cover, the petite almost doll like blond leaning against her more solidly built and stereotypical marine looking lover. They were sitting with Mel, Hallie, Jess, and Ash while passing a jug about. 

I sat down beside Ash. She slipped an arm around my waist and then blushed at her own boldness. 

We usually tried not to show too much affection in front of the others but this was not a night for rules. I kissed her properly and felt lust stir within me again, although I had just left Sarge in my bed. The jug passed us and we both took a swig of the rotgut while Stella held court. She was well on her way to drunk but in a friendly sort of way.

“Not just a couple potted plants either, I’m talking about a whole damn flower bed in the window. I’ll have daisies and tulips and roses. Here, I even know the box I’ll buy and where I’ll get it.”  She fished out a tablet and showed us an advertisement for a flower bed designed to attach to the outside of an apartment building window. She looked as proud of the image as a mother showing off a baby photo and she didn’t even own the damn thing yet.

“Do you even know how to take care of plants?” Mel asked her with a laugh.

“I’ll figure it out,” replied the blond soldier. “And I’m going to learn to cook too.” 

Mel just smiled at her friend, “Stella baby, you are the worst cook in this unit, and that saying something. You’re the only one that Sarge has actually banned from any kitchen duty beyond dishes.”

She made a face, “Okay, so maybe Cali will learn to cook.” 

Her lover kissed her on the side of her neck. “Happy to darling, might be the only way we don’t starve when were finally out on our own as civilians.”  

Stella laughed and drank from the jug when it reached her. She handed it on to Hallie. “What about you? What will you do when you can retire?” 

Hallie actually blinked. “Honestly, I’ve never thought that far ahead before. I’ll be glad if I just live long enough to think about retirement. I’ll find work as a security guard or something if my pension isn’t enough to live on.” 

“What about you Ash?” she handed off the question as quick as she could. 

Ash blinked. “Draw I guess.”

“Draw?” Stella tilted her head slightly. “I didn’t know you drew.”

The young marine flushed as red as a sunset in an old movie. “Yea. I’ve never been trained in it or anything but I’ve always been good at it. In the orphanage and even in the military academy everyone always said I was good at it and sometimes I was able to trade sketches for candy and stuff. Maybe as a civilian I could make money drawing stuff for adds or something.”

“I’ve heard dafter dreams,” said Mel. “You’ll probably do better as an artist than Stella ever will with her flowerbed. So what about you Kate?”

I should have known the question caught me off guard. I had never really thought about a world beyond the present, not really. “I don’t know. The only retired companions I’ve ever met taught at the academy.” 

“That actually what you want?” asked Mel.

I thought for a long time and then shook my head. “No, I want to be a doctor, or at least some kind of civilian medic.” I knew that it took a lot of money and schooling to actually achieve that but we were just talking about dreams right. 

“And you Jess?” Stella asked. 

Jess frowned as if confused. “I do not think that will be an issue for me. GES do not usually live long enough to reach military retirement age. Most begin to suffer cardiovascular and muscular degeneration in their mid thirties, which required early decommission.  No previous GES lines have ever live past forty. My model is newer though and the maximum possible age is not yet known. Also, as a female, I am less prone to myocardial infarctions and may potentially live longer than a male of my line.” 

That went down like a led balloon. 

She frowned and looked to Hallie, “did I do that thing you called, ‘oversharing,” again?” 

Hallie kissed her cheek and passed her the jug, “no love, your fine. Everyone is just easily saddened tonight.”

Jess nodded and drank from the jug. She made a face as she passed it on. “This fermented beverage made from our canned fruit rations is disgusting, why are we drinking it again?” 

“To get drunk obviously,” said Stella. She was smiling far more than I had ever seen her do before. Apparently talking about flower beds really put her in a good mood.

“I keep attempting this but never succeed. I’m not sure inebriation is something I can actually experience.” The super soldier sounded a bit disappointed. 

“Guess they may have made you a little too toxin resistant if some of the finest trench home brew does nothing for you,” said Mel. 

“Maybe she just hasn’t drunk enough,” suggested Cali. I had seen most of the unit drunk at some point or other, except for Tali who never drank and Sarge who only ever drank in moderation. As far as I could tell Cali could match anyone in the unit drink for drink and yet I had never seen her drunk either.

“We should do an experiment,” declared Stella.

“No,” said Mel firmly. “Genetically engineered soldier or not the poor girl doesn’t need to suffer the first hangover of her life on the dawn of battle. “Also we don’t have that much moonshine left, no point wasting it.” 

I notice out of the corner of my eye that Sarge had emerged from my room and begun to go about quietly talking to the other members of our unit. I stood, after kissing Ash on the cheek and began to do the same. Not long after Jack played a final song and everyone began to bed down. 

Once the lights were dimmed, I lay down beside Ash in her small alcove so I could be closer the unit. We made love quietly and then she fell asleep in my arms. I lay awake listening to the sounds of sex and snores and a soft rain falling on the barracks roof.

I did not have words to express how glad I was that Ash wasn’t going over the top the next day. I wondered if I had done us both a disservice by seeing to her leg so diligently, for surely with the rate of her recovery she couldn’t be spared combat duty much longer. The thought of her going into danger again made my heart ache as if it were being crushed.

For a few moments I let myself fantasize that both Ash and I would survive the next twenty years, that we’d make it to retirement. I’d get some kind of education and work as a medic or a nurse and she’d somehow make money drawing. We’d get a cheap apartment in a building far from the orphanage I grew up in. Maybe I’d try to grow things in the window. I’d never had an apartment before, I wondered what one was like. 

I was starting to drift off when I heard sobbing. I slipped from Ash’s arms and went to investigate the sound. 

In the darkness, it was hard to tell if it was one of Jack’s or one of mine. I was surprised to realize the sound came from Alex’s alcove. I called her name very softly and she went silent. 

“Hey,” said whispered. “Can I lie down with you?” 

She pulled back her curtain and I slipped in. I was a little surprised to find her alone. Then again she’d gone off with Tali a bit before lights out and Tali never slept the night beside a lover, even me. Long before Broken Shield there had been an incident where she’d had a torture flashback in her sleep and woke up with her hands around Mary’s neck. Mary had forgiven her but Tali had never forgiven herself. 

I slipped into Alex’s bed. “Hey, hey, I’ve got you.” 

She curled against me, resting her head on my chest. I stroked her hair as she sobbed as quietly as she could. 

At last she calmed. “I’m so scared Kate. I wasn’t scared the first time, but now that I know what’s waiting, I’m so goddamn scared.”

“I know,” I kept stroking her hair. I knew better than to offer platitudes. She trembled in my arms.

“I don’t know how I can even get up tomorrow, except I know I have to.” She shuddered. “I don’t want to be put in the cold earth like Sam and Nix.” 

“Then promise me you’ll come back to me, whole and well.” 

She clutched my hand. “I will.” 

At dawn they left. Jack and I all began to worry when they didn’t send any injured back in the first hour, although we heard gunfire and explosions. Then three hours later Joshua was the first through the infirmary door. He was carrying Sarah over his back. She looked so very small he set her limp body on the table. Her entire uniform shirt was soaked in blood.

“Get her started on a transfusion and get her something better than a field bandage.”

He took the bottle of water Jack handed, him drinking and coughing. 

I scrambled to set up a bag of plasma blood and a line. We couldn’t resupply often enough to keep bagged blood fresh but we had nearly a crate of bags of a kind of synthetic plasma that worked well enough and didn’t have to be refrigerated. 

When I cut away her shirt I found that she had more than soaked through the field dressing on her shoulder.

“How many more injured?” I asked as I worked. 

“I don’t know. Sarah, Millie and I got separated from the others during a sudden airstrike. Sarah got pinned down behind a burned out transport by a sniper and Millie tried to get to her. She got her fool self shot trying and then Sarah ran out to her when she saw her go down and got shot as well. I finally got the bloody sniper then but it was too late for Milie.” He said it all as emotionlessly as if he were recounting the weather. “I wasn’t sure how far I’d be able to carry Sarah, so I came back with her instead of looking for the unit.”

Joshua wasn’t a big man, not by marine standards, and carrying a grown woman through the trenches on his own couldn’t have been an easy feat.  

Sarah suddenly began to convulse and then there was no time to think. I started CPR when she stopped breathing. Jack and Joshua did what they could. After a few minutes, Joshua pulled me away from her. “She’s gone.”

“No, the wounds not even that bad.”

“I’m sorry.” 

I just stared down at my blood covered hands and felt empty. 

A cry went up outside. 

I stripped off my gloves and followed the others to the door. The group that rushed back into camp was a fraction of the size it should have been. I saw Sarge, Jess, Hallie, Stella, Cali  and Tali. There was no sign of Jen or Alex. Stella wasn’t looking so good either. She was limping with Jess and Cali’s support, her face twisted with pain and her leg a mess of blood. 

The Fifty-Eighth and the Sixty-Second were both were also lacking about half their people. I did not see Sergeant Cooper. From the ashen look on Mark’s normally impassive face and open grief on the faces of the members of the Fifty-Eighth, I knew she was likely dead. There were only about half as many Delvians as I would have expected and they had four wounded. 

I hurried Stella into the infirmary. There were two walking wounded in Joshua’s unit and one woman on a stretcher from Jack’s. The woman on the stretched had a bad head wound but was breathing on her own, so there was hope. 

I didn’t have a chance to slow down or think until I was working on Stella’s leg, which wasn’t looking good.

“Where are the others.” 

She stared at me blankly. “What do you mean.” 

“Everyone else, did you get seperated?”

Cali, who was standing beside Stella’s bed, holding her hand, gave me a tired look. “We’re all that’s left. We got caught in an air raid.”

Grief would have choked me then if I let it. I couldn’t afford that.I needed to get Stella’s bleeding stopped or I might lose her too. 

Then the bombardment started with a horrible crashing sound. I kept working as if nothing had changed. I had nothing to give Stella for the pain but moonshine and after a certain point she stopped trying to not scream as I worked on her leg. It didn’t really matter since I could barely hear her over the explosions. The generator went out at some point and I had to work by the light of an electric lantern. When at last the shaking stopped I ventured out to look up into the afternoon sky. For the first time in months, the soft golden shimmer of the great shield was gone, nothing but the more purplish bubble of the trench shield remained. I was so far past fear that I felt nothing.

Only a few minutes later, Harper rushed out of the communications shack, on her way to find Sarge and Lieutenant Bernard she called to me. “Get the wounded ready to travel. We’re retreating and central command is sending transports to get us to the airfield.” 

I had no sooner stepped back into the infirmary to tell Jack and Joshua, than a second bombardment started. This time it sounded it was going both ways. After about an hour it stopped. The sound of a landing transport was the most welcome sound I had ever heart. When I went out again, my heart fell. The craft that landed was smaller than it should have been and bore the Delvian flag. The Delvian troops had no problem hurring aboard as Sarge and the Delvian Lieutenant argued. 

“We can’t take more. It’s will overload the craft. I’m sure your own ships are on their way.”

“At least take our wounded.” 

“How many?” he asked warily.

I butted in, “four newly injured and two who can’t handle an overland retreat if it comes to it. Ash still can’t run and Luca can’t shoot.” 

“That’s six people.” 

“Seven with a medic,” I snapped. “Someone needs to tend the wounded, yours included.” 

Sarge grabbed my arm. “You’re not going with them,” she hissed in my ear. “Not after what they did to Joshua.” 

We would have argued then but the damn delvian solved that for us. “We can only take four and that still puts us overweight. Just give us the freshly wounded.” 

“Leave some of your uninjured then!” snapped Sarge.

“No. I can’t change the laws of gravity and the transport can only carry so many. My duty is to my own people first. You get four spots or nothing.”

Sarge looked like she wanted to strangle him but I grabbed her arm and shook my head. She looked at me with too wide eyes but accepted the situation. 

The moment that Stella realized that Cali was putting her on the transport without her she began to protest, even try to get back off. I’d given her enough of a sedative that she didn’t have the strength to fight. The sound of her screaming Cali’s name was the last thing I heard before the small transport rose from the ground. To the Delvian’s credit, it was fairly clear from the way the transport struggled that it was overloaded. The lieutenant hadn’t been lying. Had the Delvians not lost so many, they would have had to leave people behind. 

Cali held it together until the shuttle was out of sight and then she slumped like a puppet with its strings cut. “She isn’t going to forgive me for this.” 

“As long as she’s alive to not forgive you, that’s all that matters,” said Sarge.

We had just turned to head back towards the dorms when Lieutenant Bernard emerged from the communications shack and bellowed for everyone to gather in the mess. Once we all inside the mess I saw that there were too many seats left empty. My unit was down to ten people with Stella evacuated. There were eleven left of Jacks and thirteen of Joshua's. Grief tried to swell up inside of me and I forced it down, I would face it later when I could afford to. 

Lieutenant Bernard had never been a man known for his subtlety. “I’ve got bad news and then I’ve got more bad news. As you all know the great shield has failed and our own won’t last much longer. On the radio they said they lost too many light transports trying to get to us and the other units along the trenchline. No one is coming. We’ve been ordered to retreat on foot to the nearest launch pad.” 

“That’s nearly twenty miles away,” said on of the Sixty-Second. “Through the jungle.” 

“And bombed out craters and old trench lines,” one of the Fifty-Eighth added unhelpfully.

“You lot will manage. If you leave now, you can make a fair number of miles before sunset and cover the rest within a day.” He took a breath. “For now all the small trench shields are still working. A few of us need to stay to keep ours going for as long as possible and then to hold the trench as long as possible to give the others time to retreat. I need five volunteers.”

Before Sarge could even open her mouth, Lieutenant Bernard glared her, “Don’t even try and be noble Lily. You’ve got a daughter.” 

She couldn't’ argue with that. 

“I suppose I have to stay then,” said Harper hollowly. “I’m not a true mechanic but I’m the best hope you have of keeping the shield going now that Nix is dead.”

“I’m not letting you do this alone,” said Tali. No one argued with her.

Two of older from the Sixty-Second, neither of whom I had ever gotten to know every well, although I think they were a couple traded a tired look. “You’ll need a gunner and someone who can actually fix the pulse cannon.”

“And someone who actually speaks Varcian in case we live long enough to have a chance to surrender,” the woman from the Fifty-Eighth looked utterly terrified but she volunteers anyway. 

“No, you should go with your unit Private Barton” said Marcus evenly. “My Varcian is less proficient than yours but I am better in a fight and will thus be more useful here.” 

She looked at him like a woman who had just been released from hell, “are you sure?” 

“You have said before that you have a little sister still in an orphanage on Terra Nueva. From what I understand that means you have a duty to survive and return to her. With Sergeant Cooper dead, my only remaining duty is to my unit. I can best fulfill that duty by guarding their retreat.”

Private Barton bust into tears and hugged him. Marcus stood their stiffly but didn’t push her away.

And that was how we decided who stayed and who went. It was no accident that, aside for Marcus, the veteran membres of the units volunteers before anyone else could. They were giving the younger soldiers a chance to survive. War brings out the worst in people but it also brings out the best. 

 

We set of fifteen minutes later. We took our rifles and our packs loaded with shelters to get us through the night and enough supplies for three days. If felt strange to shoulder my rifle again, I hadn’t actually practiced much with it since arriving, my other duties had taken up too much of my time. Joshua, Jack and I split what remaining emergency medical supplies we had between all of us, in case we became separated. The med kit I shoved into my backpack was half as full as it should have been. 

When Joshua saw my rifle, he told me to leave it behind. 

“But you’re taking yours.”

“I’ve got a standard issue one, it won’t make me stand out. You’ve literally got a companions weapon, designed to be lighter. Better to be caught without a weapon than captured carrying something that will identify you as a companion.” 

I considered taking a regular rifle but my pack was already so heavy with the med kit and a few supplies, I knew I couldn’t take the extra weight and keep up. I went back into the barracks to put my rifle in my room and the realized the absurdity of the action. It wasn’t like I was ever coming back. I took one last look at the small room with its unmade bed and then went back out to join the others. 

I had no idea how to how to say goodbye to Tali or Harper. When I hugged Harper couldn’t find any words. It was all I could do not to cry. She kissed me on the forehead. 

“Stay close to Sarge, she’ll get you and the others to safety.”

I didn’t want to let go of her but there wasn’t much time. When I reached for Tali, she pulled me into her arms and kissed me with the desperation of someone clinging to last spark of warmth. When she let go of me she said simply, “Go have a good life kid.” 

It seemed almost absurd that although they were the ones who were likely facing their own deaths, they’d both comforted me. Maybe that was what they needed though. Sometimes it’s a lot easier to be strong for someone else than for oneself. 

As we prepared to step through the shield on the opposite of the trench side, Sarge saluted Lieutenant Bernard and he returned the gesture. 

“Don’t look so glum Lily. For all we know, I might survive. If I don’t, I don’t know, name a kid after me or something.” His smile almost real.

She managed the ghost of a smile in return. “You do realize that Mary and me can only have daughters.” 

“You don’t think Waldo is a good name for a baby girl?” 

“Please survive so I don’t have to name a child that.”

“I’ll try.” 

Then we set off through a temporary gap in the shield, across the bombed out wasteland that lay between us and the jungle. When I looked back I could see the outlines of six people set against the harsh backlight of the late afternoon sun. I knew I would never see Tali or Harper again. My heart ached inside my chest and my limbs felt heavy.

I nearly jumped when I felt Sarge’s hand on my arm. She spoke too softly for the others to hear. “Hey kid, how you holding up?” 

“I…” and then I had to shut my mouth or I would have sobbed like Private Barton had earlier that day.

She spoke before I could shatter. “Do you remember how Stella kept checking on everyone after we first landed and had to hike to the trenches.”

I nodded.

“She’s not with us so I need you to do what she normally does. Every time we stop, make sure everyone eats and drinks something. Keep an eye on the others to see if anyone is flagging. Can you do that.” I knew perfectly well that during that first march, Stella had been doing part of the job of a companion, because I hadn’t fully known how yet.

“Yea,” my voice sounded very small in my own ears.

She squeezed my arm. “Thank you Kate. Whatever happens, I want you to know you’ve always been a good Shield Maiden to our unit.” 

Then she was gone, moving up to the front of the group, pausing to speak to soldiers and give orders as she went. 

I felt an odd sort of calm settle over me. My grief was waiting to swallow me whole but I had to keep it at bay for just a little longer. My unit needed me and I couldn’t let them down. 

  
  



	20. Chapter 20

 

It rained hard in the night and grew even more bitterly cold than usual. I tried to sleep as best I could in a small tent curled up between Ash and Hallie. Jess and Cali slept on the outer sides against the tent walls. Jess’s GES nature made her a bit more resistant to the cold and she was sharing a bag with Hallie, so she seemed to do alright. 

Tough as she was, Cali lacked such advantages. Within an hour I heard her teeth chattering. I slipped from the warmth of the bag I shared with Ash and gently nudged her towards the center of the tent. Somehow she had actually managed to fall asleep. 

I wiggled into Cali’s bag and took her hands in my own, they were like ice. 

“You should have said something.” 

“I’m fine.” 

“Sure and Stella would totally forgive me for letting you freeze to death.” 

She wrapped her arms around me, pulling me flush against her. “Fair enough. You gonna keep me warm then pretty girl?” 

“Yea.”

Somehow I did sleep then, although very shallowly. 

 

Sarge had everyone up at first light. As the others packed up our sparse camp, I moved from woman to woman checking on everyone. I noticed Jack and Joshua doing the same. Ash was limping badly from our march the day before and her night on the cold ground. Her leg might have healed enough to walk but she was nowhere near healed. I gave her some mild pain killers and had her transfer nearly everything from her pack to the others.

Mica hadn’t even tried to carry anything more than a rifle. Her sister carried the supplies for both of them. She was still showing signs of exhaustion and didn’t seem to have slept at all. I gave her some mild stimulants. 

As the only remaining officer, Sarge was directing everyone. I tapped her lightly on the shoulder. 

“You eat yet?”

She shook her head and I handed her an energy bar. She moved to shove it in a pocket. I shook my head. With a wry smile she unwrapped the protein bar and began eating. 

“You’re as bad as Mary.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

We set out as quickly as we could. Although we had the protection of the trees, there was no great shield to protect us from air or orbital strikes. Fortunately for us, the Varian's weren’t interested in a handful of retreating soldiers. All day we watched ships streaming across the sky. I didn’t know the shapes well enough to tell ours from theirs and they were usually too far away to see the flags painted on their sides. 

Partway through the morning something huge and burning fell from the sky and struck somewhere far away. The ground shook violently and in an instant every bird in the forest took flight. 

 

“Oh goddess, I think that was one of the orbital ships,” gasped Mel.

“Ours or theirs?” asked Cali. 

“No fucking idea.”

Our answer came soon enough when an hour later when we reached the top of what was either a large hill or possibly a small mountain. Although we were still relatively protected by the trees, we could look back towards the trenches we had left behind. They were a long wavering line purple small shields over buildings and red dirt at the edge of the forest. They lay before a seemingly endless field of dark craters and glinting metal that marked no man’s land. Distantly I could make out the glimmering light of the great shield that still protected of the Varcian lines. 

Suddenly fire began to fall from the heaven’s onto the Terra Nuevan lines, there was no other way to describe it. The individual trenches small purple shield bubbles held for a few minutes and then they began to pop one by one. We were so far away, I couldn’t tell which part of the distant purple line had been our trench, it could have been any among hundreds of domes.

Joshua froze beside me and when I looked at him his face was a mask of agony. When his knees gave out, Jack and I caught him. The memory of Tali’s voice and the feeling of Harper’s lips against my own flashed through my mind and had I not been holding Joshua up I might have gone down as well. 

Sarge’s voice cut through my haze. “Everyone, snap to it. We have to move. Now!”

Joshua shook his head once and then found his feet.

We kept moving. Ash’s limp got worse. Cali took everything that was left in her pack and Mel her rifle. Jess fell in beside her to give her a shoulder to lean on and help her over the more difficult roots and branches. I gave her more of my dwindling supply of painkillers and stimulants. Walking was making her injury worse but she had to keep up, we couldn’t slow down. 

A bit past midday we saw the distant purple glow of the secondary trench line. Sarge radioed ahead and a small gap was opened in the shield to let us in. Everything within was in chaos. Terra Nuevans and Delvians were running about and it wasn’t clear who was actually in charge. The one thing everyone seemed sure of was that the Varcians were coming. 

Sarge eventually managed to grab a young man wearing an officers stripes. She had to ask him twice and shake him once before she managed to get him to tell us what we already knew. No ships were coming to take us to the airfield, we had to keep retreating on foot, and yea the first trenchline had fallen. 

He tried to dart off then but she refused to let go of him until he showed us who could open the shield on the far side of the trenches and let us continue our retreat. A technician who looked as scared as I felt opened a gay in the shield for us. As we marched out she called out a  uni-spiritualist blessing for luck and when that didn’t get much response from us she added. 

“Good luck. I hope you make it” 

“You too beautiful,” called back Jack, offering a flash of his most charming grin. The instant he turned away his face fell back into a look of utter exhaustion. 

We hadn’t even reached the forest again when a ship streaked overhead and the bombardment started. 

“Run for the trees!” yelled Sarge. We did. 

I turned back when I heard Mica cry out. She’d stumbled and gone down. Luca was only a few steps ahead. She turned back and hurried to her sister, reaching to pull her back to her feet. Before I could move to go help, the earth around them exploded. 

I’d have stayed there stunned if Cali hadn’t grabbed my arm and hauled me onwards. “Come one kid.”

I wanted to collapse when we reached the treeline but she kept dragging me along. My ears were ringing but I could still hear Sarge yelling for us to keep moving. 

Behind us I heard more explosions and what sounded like artillery and gunshots. We just kept going. I briefly saw some soldiers I didn't recognize moving through the forest with us but a man who looked like their officer yelled at them that we’d all be a targeted if we bunched up too much and they turned a different way. 

We stopped briefly about two hours later. I saw then that we’d lost a woman from Jack’s unit and a man from Joshua’s in that horrible field. I passed out stimulants. Ash looked terrible, her face ashen with pain in spite of the drugs I’d given her only a few hours before.

I heard Jess arguing with her. “I can carry you on my back.”

“Even you aren’t strong enough to do that for long.”

“I’m strong enough and you are in agony.” 

“I can take it.” 

Wearily I handed them each some pills. “Jess, let Ash walk for as long as she can, when she can’t, then carry her. When you get too tired tell me and I’ll figure something out.” 

What I would figure out I wasn’t exactly sure. No other member of my unit or the others could easily carry a full grown marine, even a young female one, for an extended period of time over a long distance, especially as exhausted as we all were. A stretcher might be the best option to split the load but wouldn’t be easy to maneuver through the thick forest and would slow us down. 

As I stood there worrying, someone pressed a protein bar into my hand. “Eat.” 

I blinked at Joshua. 

He repeated himself “Eat, also did you noticed you is arm is bleeding?”

“What?” I looked down and saw that my left sleeve was damp with something dark and sticky that had probably come from my own body. 

I ate the energy bar while he cut away the torn sleve and bandged the deep gash in my arm. It must have come from debris flung by one of the explosions. It didn’t start hurting until he knotted off the bandage. He pressed my shoulder once and then went to keep seeing to the others. 

Ash made it about another hour before she finally couldn’t go any farther. Jess removed her pack and replaced it with Ash in a piggy back carry. The additional burden didn’t seem to slow her much but I didn’t trust that to last.

It was late afternoon before she began to visibly flag. Fortunately that was when Sarge called another halt. Everyone was beyond exhausted. Sarge told us that according to her calculations we were within a mile of the airfield. 

“I don’t know what will be waiting for us there, so be ready for anything,” she told us. “Once we’re within the base, I want all of us try to stay together as best we can. If we can’t all get off planet together, then I want everyone to at least stay with their units.”

We didn’t rest long. Ash insisted on walking again and with the help of Cali and Mel she managed it. Jess seemed glad of the break. I could have wept when we at last stepped from the dense forest into the wasteland that surrounded the northern spaceport. A huge purple shield glimmered over the enormous compound. It was completely and utterly swarmed with people. 

I would see countless drop ships, large somewhat triangular shaped things. As I watched, one rose from the ground with a cacophonous sound and slowly rose up to pass through a briefly opened gap in the shield. 

We began to process of crossing the pockmarked wasteland that surrounded the base. The Varcian’s had been hitting the airfield hard since the great shield went down and most of the craters were new and I saw some bodies. All the same, out goal was in sight. Hope began to blossom in my heart and then I heard the whine of an approaching ship.

“Shit!” screamed Mel looking up. “It’s fucking Varcian.”

“Everyone down!” cried Sarge. 

I dove for the nearest crater and found Jack already there. We huddled as the first explosion hit. When the earth to our left exploded, it suddenly, horribly, occured to me that they were actually deliberately targeting us. They must have been going after everyone trying to reach the base to evacuate. 

When I raised my head to look up, I saw a small arrow shaped Varcian ship, this time close enough for the green and white Varcian flag to be visible on its side, buzz past the slow troop transport that was still rising. An instant later transport fell towards the earth, burning as it went. 

I grabbed Jack’s hand and we scrambled out of our crater, running as best we could. The ship came down with a deafening crash about a hundred feet from us. The shock wave knocked Jack and me to our knees and then we were up and running again. Suddenly I the hair on my arm standing up. I felt as if I were standing within a magnet field, although I had no idea what that meant.

On instinct Jack and dove down into the first crater we saw. We found a frantic eyed Ash. She was trying to shelter an utterly still Cali. The older marine’s shirt was soaked through with blood. 

When I looked up. I saw the beam of light that hit the airfield. The purple dome held against it for a good half minute as the air heated hotter and hotter and then shattered. Jack physically shoved my head down as a wave of intense head washed over us. 

The moment it was past I heard someone yell. “Head for the trees.”

When I looked back at the airfield I could already see three enemy ships streaming towards it. We knew perfectly well what was coming. When I tried to check Cali for a pulse I couldn’t find one, her chest wasn’t rising or falling. 

“She’s dead, we have to go.” 

Jack and I helped the limping Ash out of the crater. Adrenaline alone seemed to be enough to keep her moving. Up ahead through the haze of the smoke I heard Hallie screaming for help.

We found her kneeling beside Jess. Hallie’s entire left side was streaked in blood. Her left was hanging limply at her side but at least it was there. Jess was on the ground, conscious, although barely. She seemed so calm it actually took me a minute to realize that she’d lost half her left leg. 

As I scrambled to get a tourniquet out of my pack and apply it I was vaguely aware of Hallie babbling. 

“When the first blast hit a huge boulder got thrown up, at least I think that’s what happened. I don’t know but the next thing I knew a huge rock was on my arm and I couldn’t move. Jess was trying to push it off me when another shell exploded and…” She started to sob. “I got free but she’s hurt and it is my fault and I’m not strong enough to carry her.”

I don’t know how I was able to remain calm as the smoke swirled around us and I struggled to keep Jess alive but I did. 

“Hallie,” I need you to give Ash your good shoulder and help her walk. Jack and I are going to drag Jess.”  

Dragging a very heavy and densely muscled genetically engineered soldier across rubble proved much easier said than done. We tried yelling for help but no one came. I didn’t know if everyone else was dead or if they’d made the treeline. I prayed that it was the latter. 

The smoke from the burning airbase was so bad that we could barely breathe. Every breath made my lungs burn. I am ashamed to admit this, but if Jess hadn’t been from my unit, if I hadn’t loved her so dearly, I would have been sorely tempted to abandon her. To Jack’s credit, I don’t think that thought ever even occurred to him. He just kept his grip on her shoulder and kept dragging.

Suddenly the treeline appeared out of the haze. We dragged Jess just far enough for there to be damp unbroken earth beneath us before we all collapsed.

Jess wasn’t conscious anymore but she was breathing. Ash and Hallie looked like they were both in a place beyond pain. I didn’t know what we were going to do or where we would go. I couldn’t even see the airfield anymore though the smoke. If nothing else, we were all going to freeze to death as soon as the sun set. Only Jack and I still had our packs and neither of us had a tent. 

It occured to me then that I hadn’t actually checked Hallie’s arm and the red stain on her shirt seemed to be growing. I opened my pack and dug out my medical kit, crawling over to her because I felt too tired to stand. 

I had just began to cut away her shirt and consider the wound when I heard a rifle click. Four Varcian soldiers ringed us. 

“Hands up,” barked one of the soldiers, a man who looked to be only a little bit older than me. He had a lean, almost lupine face.

We raised our hands. It wasn’t as if any of still had weapons and we were in no state to run.  

“Please,” I said in standard. “My friend is bleeding. I need to bandage her.” 

“Keep your hands up.” 

The officer glanced to the soldier to his left and said in Varcian that he thought none of us could understand, “What do you think? Should we even bother capturing them?”

The soldier considered us carefully. “The two wounded aren't worth it but I think the smaller girl might be a companion, she looks a little too young and pretty to be a regular medic. The general has offered a lot of money for a female one brought back alive.”

“Yes he has.” A cold smile twisted his lips. “And we can have a bit of fun with her first as long as we don’t mess up that pretty face.”

A shiver ran down my spine and it was all I could do to keep my face blank. No one else in my unit reacted, none of them but Jack spoke any Varcian and Jack hid his own understanding as well as I did.

The officer gave more orders to his men. “Bind all of their hands and then shoot the two visibly injured.”

“No!” so much for hiding that I understood him. 

He moved closer to look down at me where I was still kneeling on the ground my hands above my head. 

“You understand Varcian, don’t you girl?” 

There seemed no point in lying so I held his gaze. “Yes. Please don’t shoot my friends. One can still walk and the rest of us can drag the other to wherever you want to take us.” 

He leaned closer. “Tell me if you are a Shield Maiden or not and I’ll consider it.” 

“I am,” I knew that I had very likely just made my own final hours considerably worse than they might have otherwise been but if there was any chance I could protect Hallie and Jess I had to take it. 

His smile grew and for an instant I was reminded of a picture of a wolf who ate a grandmother in a children's book I’d once read. Had his eyes been yellow instead of green, the resemblance would have been perfect. I forced down the urge to look away. “Please, I will do anything you want as long as you don’t hurt them.” 

That earned me a slight eyebrow raise. “You do realize that I can already do anything I want to you.”

“Yes, but unwilling I’m no different from any other woman. It’s training that makes a Shield Maiden. That’s what you wan’t, isn’t it?” 

A murmur of interest went through the waiting soldiers. I felt terrified and sick to my stomach but I kept my head up.

He lowered his voice, “And how do I know that even if we transport your injured soldiers back to base you won’t still kick and bit like any other Terra Nuevan whore as soon as we shove onto your back?”

“You have my word now and you’ll still have my unit prisoner then.” 

He touched the side of my face causing me to shudder in revolusion,“You really will do anything to protect them won’t you?” 

“I’m a shield maiden.” 

“Alright.” He stepped back and addressed his unit. “Change of plans. We’re taking them all back to the transport. Don’t shoot the injured unless they fall behind.”

As soon as Jack and I began to drag Jess again, I wondered if I should have bargained higher, tried to get help moving the injured. The Varcians soldiers seemed perfectly happy to just watch Jack and I struggle. Ash and Hallie were leaning heavily against each other, both stumbling. 

“Kate,” whispered Jack in Nuevan, “Do you still have your pill?” 

He meant the suicide capsule in the little metal tube attached to my dog tags. All Terra Nuevan Soldiers carried them, not just companions. If only companions had them, it would have made us easier to identify. I had heard a rumor that the ones non-companions were issued were actually sugar pills to try and lower suicide rates among the troops. 

“Yes,” I hissed back. 

“As soon as we get to the base, when they aren’t watching us as closely, take it.” 

I didn’t answer, just kept dragging. My shoulders burned and my arms ached. I don’t know how I kept moving. 

“Kate, listen to me. I know you think you can save us but you can’t. They won’t keep their word and what they’ll do to you first will be worse than death.”

I didn’t have a chance to think through my doubts because that was when we reached a clearing with a small hovercraft. It was a small triangular shaped vehicle that likely only worked planetside. 

As we began to draw closer, gunfire suddenly erupted from the forest. Jack and I flattened ourselves to the ground. I heard yelling in Delvian. A few seconds later the gunfire stopped. I looked up as six ragged looking Delvians I had never met before entered the clearing. 

All four of the Varcians were down, as well as one who must have been left to guard the transport. From the sounds coming from the officer, he wasn’t actually dead yet. One of the older Delvians used his rifle to fix that.

By some miracle none of my surviving unit were hurt. We’d all dropped fast enough and the Delvians had likely recognized the dark green of our uniforms.  

The Delvian who had shot the Varcian officer considered us with narrowed eyes. I raised my hands in surrender in case he thought I was a threat for some reason, not daring to fully sit up. 

Instead he just sighed. “Stand up, stand up.” He didn’t look very impressed by any of us. “Please tell me that one of you can fly this thing,” he said in broken standard. 

“I can,” said Hallie. As far as I knew she only had simulator training and only with our own planets crafts. Hopefully that would be enough. 

The Delvian lowered his rifle and offered her his hand. “Then I am very happy to meet you. The name is Sergeant Marino and if you can get my men and me to the nearest Delvian space port, you have my word I’ll make sure you get off planet.”

“We just came from the big northern allied one and it was destroyed,” said Jack.

“We’ve had radio contact with one on a smaller Delvian base about fifty miles to the south. It’s shields are still holding, the Varcian’s are going for the bigger ones right now.”

Hope again stirred in my heart. “Then there is no time to waste.”


	21. Chapter 21

After a somewhat terrifying amount of trial and error, and with my assistance in translating the words on some of the buttons and screens, Hallie did prove capable of flying the Varcian hovercraft and soon enough we were skimming overing the forest.

We followed the directions the Delvian officer gave us and head for the smaller space port safely. I do not have words to describe how relieved I was when it came into view, a large square of gleaming metal and concrete, yet untouched or damaged. The Varcians really were going for bigger targets.

As we had had not been able to figure out how to work the hovercraft's radio and did not want to be shot down as an enemy ship we landed it in the first large clearing we found and walked the rest of the way to the base. The Delvians helped move Jess on a stretcher that I found in the hovercraft. Sergeant Marino gave Ash a shoulder to lean against. Hallie was stumbling badly. I still hadn’t done more that give her a few emergency bandages and she’d lost a lot of blood. Jack took her good arm and helped her keep going.

The small spaceport we walked into was in the final stages of evacuation. Had we been even an hour later we would have found them gone and the base blown so that the Varcians couldn’t take it.

To his credit, Sergeant Marino kept his word and got us onto one of the last troop transports offplanet. I saw nothing of the ride up beyond the blank wall of the transport. I don’t think it occured to me until I stepped out into a landing bay full of young men wearing dark brown Delvian uniforms, that although we’d made it onto an allied ship, we weren’t on a Terra Nuevan one. I had no idea where we were going but I was certain that it wasn’t our home. Still at least we were alive and that was what mattered.

It was not as if I had time to worry about anything that far ahead anyway. Jack and my attempts to find a more experienced medic to treat Jess or Hallie proved fruitless, there were just too many wounded men crammed onto the ship. As long as Hallie and Jess weren’t bleeding out, they weren’t a priority for any of the few medics we saw moving among the wounded..

In our first hours on the ship we were shuffled along with Sergeant Marino’s men to an empty part of the shuttle bay and left with the other soldiers who had poured off the troop transports. Jack and I used what supplies we had to stabilize Jess and Hallie. Poor Hallie’s arm was fractured in multiple places and I was fairly sure she needed extensive surgery to reconstruct it. I was no surgeon. Stitching the flesh of Jess’s leg closed was about the extent of Jack’s and my abilities.

Although Ash was in a lot of pain from her leg and I suspected that she had badly re-injured and torn some of the damaged muscle tissue there wasn’t anything I could do for her. At least she wasn’t in any imminent danger.

It was only after I finished with Ash that I noticed a dark stain on Jack’s pants leg when he came back with some food and water for us. I was several levels beyond exhausted but I made him sit still while I looked at his leg.

He made a low whimpering sound when I tried to draw up the fabric of his pants leg. When I cut away the cloth around his lower shin, I found a surprisingly deep set of gashes.

“When did this happen?”

“I’m not sure,” he admitted. “I think it was when that troop transport crashed near us outside the first spaceport. I didn’t even feel it until we were on the shuttle with the Delvians.”

I found a small shard of metal still buried in his skin as I cleaned the wound. It didn’t look like he’d have any serious muscle damage at least.

After drinking a bit of water I finally lay down  on the hard metal floor, Ash on one side of me and Jack on the other. I honestly have no idea when our ship left the orbit of that accursed moon and began its journey.

 

The sound of an argument woke me.

“Who are they and why are they here?” asked a very imperiouse and annoyed sounding voice.

Sergeant Marino answered. “Their Terra Nuevans and they are here because they evacuated with us. There wasn’t time to get them to their own people.”

I sat up and saw a small man wearing a white uniform and an odd flat hat, which I would  later learn was the uniform of a ship’s steward. He was relatively young but had a way of scowling that made him look older.  He took no note of me.

“Wonderful, you’ve brought me non Delvians and they are women to boot. This ship has no facilities for women. What do you expect me to do with them?”

“I don’t know, find them a doctor maybe? Several are injured.” Sergeant Marino was looking down at the smaller man like he’d like his patience was fading quickly.

“As if any of our medics have time to see to foreigners right now,” he huffed and then frowned again. “They will need to be moved. We can’t have them among our troops. Honestly, someone should have told me the moment they were brought on board. They should have been put in cold sleep immediately to avoid issues.”

I stood up, with some difficulty as my entire body hurt. The rest of my unit was asleep and so were most of Sergeant Marino’s unit. “None of us can go into cold sleep while were still injured.” Even I knew that the possibility of waking up again if you went under while weakened was very low.

The little man glared at me. “Well I can hardly leave you and your friends in a room full of enlisted men now can I missy? You and your unit are likely the first women some of these soldiers have seen in a year.”

I would later learn that that part of his assessment was accurate. With the exception of the few units that had been posted in the same trenches as female Terra Nuevan units, none of the other Delvians had been around any women since they had arrived on Kepler. The Delvian military was entirely male, medics included and Kepler had been ruled to dangerous a combat zone to have any military brothels.

A few may have seen a female Varcian soldier, although as likely as not that would have only had a brief glimpse of someone shooting or a body in no man's land. Although the Varcian military did have women, they were more likely to be officers or medics and were seldom used as foot soldiers. In my time on Kepler, I never saw a Varcian woman at all.

The steward turned his glare back to Sergeant Marino before I could say anything in my broken Delvian. “Do you realize the potential PR nightmare you’ve brought me? There is absolutely no way to guarantee these women’s safety on this ship. When one of them is raped, which I’m sure will happen, the ship will be blamed. You mark my words.”

Sergeant Marino crossed his arms. “Would you have prefered I left them to die?”

The steward ignored that comment and then he snapped his fingers. “I know. I’ll put them in the brig, that might work.”

“You are not putting injured women in a jail cell,” snapped the officer.

“And are you going to guarantee their virtue?”

I nearly lost it then. One of my friends had lost half a leg and all of us were injured and this bastard was worried about virtue? Before I could open my mouth, or perhaps because he could see I was going to, Sergeant Marino spoke again.

“You have my word as an officer and a gentleman that I will personally see to the safety and wellbeing of all five Terra Nuevans.”

The steward narrowed his lips. “I suppose I will have to accept that. If I hear even a rumor of any sort of impropriety going on though, I will move the women to the brig immediately.”

“I am a married man sir and I can vouch for the character of all surviving members of my unit. We’ll keep them safe.”

“You had better.”

“If you are so concerned about propriety perhaps you can see to finding us a room outside of the shuttle bay?”

“I will see what can be done but don’t expect me to move mountains,” and with that the steward stormed off.

I had to fight down an almost absurd urge to laugh. “He can’t have seriously been concerned about my virtue was he?” I was certainly afraid of being raped but I wasn’t even sure I understood what virtue was or if I had any.

“I doubt that little shipboard bastards cares about anything but avoiding paperwork. He wasn’t wrong about you and the others being in danger though. Most men are decent but they’ve all just been through hell and there aren’t that many officers left. It would be best if you all stay close to my unit and go nowhere alone.”   

“Thank you. We will.”

I just had to pray that he and his men would not themselves prove dangerous themselves. Marino seemed an honest man, I hadn’t had a chance to form an impression of the surviving members of his unit.  
A short time later, a lesser steward with a tablet showed up and said that a room had been found. We ended up in what was likely a large storage closet. It was a major step up from the crowded landing bay. There were certainly no bunks. Sergeant Marino went out with two of his unit and eventually came back with a pile of scratchy blankets and three thin sleeping pallets.

We put Jess, who was still drifting in and out of consciousness on one and Hallie on another. Ash kept insisting she was fine but I made her lie down and rest anyway.

Attempts at getting any of us to a doctor proved fruitless during the first week. Most of the Delvian’s own medics hadn’t made it off planet in the retreate and the ships smaller medical staff was utterly overwhelmed by the huge number of injured troops. Jack and I did what we could for ourselves and our friends. We also began to treat the more minor injuries Marino’s unit had suffered, including a bullet wound and a broken wrist.

Sergeant Marino and his unit actually proved to be very diligent in their self appointed positions as our “guardians.” They were never anything less than decent and kind to us. From what I have come to understand about Delvians they tend to have something of a Madonna-Whore Complex in how they view women. They tend to be fiercely protective of women they view as pure. The problem arises when they encounter ones they do not. Jack and I never mentioned that we were companions and the Delvians didn’t know enough about how Terra Nuevan units worked to guess that we were.

I and the other women from my unit seldom left that small room over the next several weeks. There was a bathroom just down the hall but we didn’t even dare go there unless two of Marino’s unit came to guard the door. I remembered perfectly well that Joshua had been attacked when he was alone. We never had any trouble with any of the Delvian soldiers, likely because we made sure there was never an opportunity.

Marino and his unit brought us what food they could. Even with all the cold sleep pods full,the ship was well over capacity and supplies were low. I learned in those first days that we were not heading to Delvia but actually to an allied space station orbiting a small planet a months journey away. The Delvian’s planned to resupply there and meet some of their own ships. I clung to the hope that there were would be Terra Nuevan ships and way home there.

Ironically, although I was the least injured of my unit, I was the one who ended up nearly dying from blood poisoning. During our first days on the ship, I started Jess, Hallie and Jack all on a course of antibiotics, which required all that we had left. I thought the gash on my arm was not severe enough to require any. I was wrong. It became infected very quickly.

I didn't realize how bad it had become until I woke up the fifth morning burning with fever. I can still vaguely remember the feeling of Jack pressing his palm against my forehead and telling me he was going to give me some of the remaining antibiotics. I know I begged him not to, to make sure the others took a full course.

Sergeant Marino watched us argue for a bit and then lost his patience. He picked me up far more easily than I would have thought possible and carried me to the crowded ship’s infirmary. Apparently he was very good at yelling and demanding things.

The novelty of him walking into the medical bay with a limp woman in his arms actually proved shocking enough to get me seen immediately. Had I known that it would work, I would have had him try it with Jess or Hallie on the first day.

I don’t remember much after that. I know I dreamed and dreamed darkly. I cried for my mother and then for Sarge and finally for Ash. Ash at least they could bring to me. She sat beside my cot and held my hand through the worst of the fever. She would tell me later that I was utterly convinced that all of the dead members of our unit were with me. She said I talked to Sam, Nix, Millie, Sarah, Jen, Harper, Tali,  Luca, Mica, Cali and Mel.

Eventually my fever faded and I came back to myself. My arm healed, although I would carry the scars for the rest of my life. We managed to get the doctor who had had tended me to look at Jess and Hallie, his evaluation of them was in line with my own and Jacks.

To my surprise, Jess suffered the fewest complications. She regained full consciousness by the time I began to recover in the infirmary she was learning to hop about on crutches.

We were still on the ship for a full two weeks by the time Hallie’s arm was finally operated on. The ship’s surgeon did what he could but even in the years to come Hallie never got back full use of the arm. She was never able to lift it higher than her shoulder and it always shook.

Jack’s wound also proved worse than we initially thought. It festered in spite of the first course of antibiotics and we ended up having to beg the ship’s doctor to give him a stronger kind. Those at least worked, although the infection weakened him terribly.

Although Ash limped badly and had to rely on a set of crutches, much like Jess did, she at least had no open wounds or signs of infection. When, much later, on Terra Nueva she was finally seen by a specialist, we would realize that the retreat had caused permanent harm to the muscles of her leg. While eventually she was able to walk unaided, she would still often be forced to resort to the use of a cane on bad days.

Dealing with our various injuries spared us from having to think of other things. During that month on the Delvian ship none of us spoke of our shared losses or grief. We simply focused on surviving and healing and for a time that was enough. I fell asleep every night curled up in Ashe’s arms and the mere fact that we both drew breath, much less drew breath together, seemed a miracle.

 

When we reached the allied station we were fortunate enough to find a large Terra Nuevan troop ship on its way home from a different front of the war was there refueling. We were allowed to board. Sergeant Marino gave me his contact information and we actually did maintain a correspondence over the next several years until he died in a firefight on Brahe.

The survivors of my unit and I had all healed enough to risk going under for cold sleep and so we spared the boredom of the next four months of travel. This time before I went under I made sure there was a note in my record so that I wouldn’t bleed to death when I woke.

Once back on Terra Nueva we were all transferred to a military hospital in the capital. It was actually attached to the same base we had left from a lifetime before. We found Stella there, she’d made it off planet and onto one of the large Terra Nuevan ships before the larger northern spaceport fell.

She’s known as soon as she made it back to Terra Nueva that Cali and the rest of the unit were not counted among those listed as making it onto a Terra Nuevan ship. She’d heard rumors that part of a female Terra Nuevan unit made it off planet on a Delvian ship and she’d lived with that hope for months.

I have never in all the years of my life seen fiercer joy or deeper grief when she met us on the landing pad beside the base. She embraced me the moment my feet touched Terra Nuevan soil, and then she wept when she saw that Cali wasn’t there.

It was in those first days in the hospital, when we were finally safe, that the weight of all we had lost and the uncertainty of the future at last began to weigh upon us. There was no question that Jess, Hallie, Ash and Stella would be medically discharged. You need four good limbs to be a soldier. What exactly that would mean for each of them proved less clear.

A few days after we returned I found Jess sitting outside in one of the hospital’s few outside courtyards. She had her crutches leaned against her bench. It was bitterly cold but she had only a blanket drawn around her uniform. None of us had actually been insued as coat, at least not while we were still on the medical wing.  

“Can I sit with you?”

She nodded and I slid onto the bench and waited. I’d been a companion long enough to realize that beyond listening, waiting to listen was also very important. When I started to shiver, Jess drew her blanket around us both and slipped her arm around my waist. “They told me today that I’ll never return to active duty, even after I get a prosthesis for the foot.”

I had already assumed that would be the case but I knew better than to say it.

“They offered me one way I could stay in the military and I don’t think I’m willing to take it.”

A year earlier she never would have used a word like “willing,” she’d come a long way in her ability to express her own needs and desires, in even realizing that she had them.

She brushed her hair from her face, it was well past military length now. “One of the officers that trained me, the assistant director of this bases GES program, came and talked to me today. He said that I couldn’t fight anymore but I could still be useful to the military. They want to try using some of the female GES of my line as surrogates for the next line they’ve developed.” She spoke utterly without emotion or intonation.

I chose my next words carefully. “Was he offering you a choice or giving you an order?”

She leaned back against the bench. “A choice but if I refuse I’m out of the military at a half pension.”  

“How long do you have to decide?”

“I already said no.”

As far as I knew it was the first time in her life she’d ever told a superior no.

She let out a tired breath. “I don’t know if I can even call this body my own, not when the military made me, but I have to live in it. I’m a person not a weapon or a tool, even if that is all I was designed to be. I feel pain and have emotions and I don’t want to spent the years I have left having babies, especially not babies who will be used just like I have.”

She paused, looking down to search my face for approval or censure. I hugged her. “I think you chose wisely. Do you know what you’ll do now?”

“I am not sure exactly but I know that above all else I want to be with Hallie. She has talked about getting an apartment when we leave the hospital. I think perhaps I should ask her to marry me. That will make it easier for her and I to take care of each other won’t it? We will be able to sign forms for each other.”

“Not sure that is the best way to phrase things when you ask her.”

She blinked and for an instant she looked like the sweet baffled girl I’d first met. “How should I phrase it then?”

“You want to marry her for more than joint paperwork right?”

“Yes, I love her and wish to protect and provide for her as long as we both live.”

“I’d go with that.”

She nodded and we sat for a bit more. Even with the blanket, I was cold but still in no rush to go back to the austere white walls of our medical wing.

“I am very frightened, I’m not used to that. My line was designed to have a suppressed sense of fear but I am starting to think I might be defective. I feel fear when I think of leaving the military. It was very hard simply to be placed in a non GES unit, I do not know how I will handle civilian life.”

“I think that kind of fear is normal.”

“I hope so.  

 

Neither Jack nor I had physical injuries bad enough to merit  a medical discharge but psychological issues were another matter. The full extend of Jack’s PTSD began to manifest very quickly.

His hands shook uncontrollably, to the point even holding a fork began to become a challenge, at least when I could convince him to eat at all. He barely slept and when he did he always woke up screaming from nightmares. After a psychological evaluation he was ruled unfit to return to duty. That was usually what happened when a companion lost their entire unit.

I was not ruled unfit, although I’m fairly certain I should have been. I was a hair's breadth from breaking down utterly, I just couldn’t while the surviving members of my unit still needed me. After a week of convalescence I was called to a superior's office where a cold eyed bureaucrat gave me my choices.

Ideally they would like to assign me to a new unit. If I were unwilling to return to combat, I could be re-assigned to a brothel on planet. As I had already served honorably for over a year, I could be guaranteed a place in an officer's brothel instead of an enlisted one. Because I had lost half my unit, they also had to offer me the option of early retirement, although on only a half pension. I took the early retirement without a second thought.  

She didn’t look up from her tablet. “Are you sure? A half pension won’t be enough to support you and you’re unlikely to have an easy time finding a civilian job. You’ll end up in a brothel as likely as not. At least if you're in a military one, you’ll get better health care.”

Her words chilled me. Far too easily I could picture myself suffering my mother’s fate. I didn’t let my fear rule me or force me into a decision I didn’t want. “I’m sure. All of the survivors of my unit have been medically discharged, the only way I can still take care of them is to become a civilian as well.”

“Suit yourself. You’ve two more weeks to convalesce in the hospital and then you will need to find your own housing. All of your back pay will be released to you. Your pension will be paid into your account at the first of each month.”

She held out the tablet. “Put your thumbprint here.”

And just like that I was discharged from the Terra Nuevan military. I had no idea what I was going to do or where I was going to go but I still had my unit at least. When returned to the medical wing I found Mary Allen, the former companion of the Forty-Second, waiting to meet me.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi folks. I hope this chapter wasn't too much of a slowdown after the intensity of the last two. There will be one more after this and a short epilogue.


	22. Chapter 22

 

The others, Jack included, were all gathered around Mary Allen in our little corner of the larger hospital wing.  The first thing that struck me was how stunningly beautiful the other woman was. She was slight, as slight as me but she held herself like a woman of considerably greater height. She had the kind of classical looking face that could have graced a romance novel cover, all high cheekbones and heart shaped chin. She wore her dark curls long and loose and about her shoulders in the way of a civilian not a soldier. Her eyes though, she had the eyes of woman who had walked through hell and come out the other side. I knew that look, I saw it every day in the morning.

She offered a scarred hand. “Mary Allen.” 

“Kate Kaylan.” 

When I took her hand she pulled me into a hug. In my ear she whispered. “I owe you everything for taking care of Lily and the others when I couldn’t.”

My heart broke in countless different ways. “They’re still gone.” 

She cupped my face gently, forcing me to meet her dark eyes. “I knew they probably wouldn’t make it back to me from the moment they left. You gave them comfort before the end. That’s what matters.”

And then I did cry, the first real tears I had allowed myself since the retreat, desperate wrenching sobs as I fell into her arms in the middle of that room lined with cots. 

She held me, letting me soak her shoulder with my tears and snot. In her arms I felt safe, actually safe, possibly for the first time since my mother died. 

I had finally begun to calm when the sound of an actual child fussing startled me enough to look up.  Mary Allen wiped my face with a cloth from a pocket and then kissed me on the forehead before she went to collect her baby from Stella.

I’d been so amazed to meet Mary I hadn’t even noticed her daughter. Sarge and Mary’s daughter was about nine months old, small enough to still be easily carried but alert enough to watch the world with huge dark eyes. 

“I don’t know what she wants.” The blond soldier was clearly uncertain of what to do with the now wailing infant. 

Mary Allen reached for the baby and then sat down on the edge of one of the beds with her. “She’s probably just hungry.” She deftly unbuttoned her shirt and set her daughter to nursing. 

I stared, I’d never actually seen a baby nurse before. I hadn’t seen a child, much less a baby since leaving the orphanage years before. It was hard to believe such a tiny perfect human being could exist. I’d seen so much death, so many broken bodies, to see a life so new to the world was almost overwhelming.

The former Shield Maiden smirked when she noticed she had become the center of attention. 

“Yea, I know it surprised me too but breasts apparently have a non recreational use. Who’d have ever thought it?” 

I could see exactly why her unit had loved her so much. For all the grief she carried, she had a way of letting joy and humor shine though light light through clouds. 

Everyone blushed and looked away, except for Jess who was largely immune to embarrassment and Stella who actually laughed. I hadn’t thought I’d ever see Stella smile, much less laugh again.

“I still can’t believe you’re a mom Mary.” 

“The baby isn’t sufficient evidence?” the former Shield Maiden flashed a smile as good as Jack’s best. “Now as fascinating as I’m sure little Alexandra here is, right now I’m more interested in learning who what you are all planning on doing now.”

 

Just like that, Mary quietly and firmly took charge of all of our lives. I think in a way she needed us as much as we needed her. She’d visited Stella almost every day in the hospital when Stella was there alone. They’d gotten each other through those terrible months when they didn’t know if the entire unit was gone or not.

Now Mary knew Sarge was dead and she needed something to keep her going. For a woman who’s spent most of her life caring for others, being needed was exactly what she needed. 

She was also the only one among us, other than Stella, who had the faintest idea how to live in the civilian world. Although Stella had grown up in the slums, she’d entered the military academy at sixteen and had known no other life since. Mary had been an orphan brat like the rest of us but she’d been out on her own in the world for over two years and raising a child as well.

Her own tiny apartment couldn’t really accommodate more than herself, her daughter and possibly Stella once she was well enough to leave the hospital. She convinced Jess, Hallie, Ash, Jack and me that we could pool our resources and afford a modest one in her building, even on the same floor. I think Hallie and Jess might have liked to get their own place but there wasn’t money for that. 

Later that week she arranged for me to meet her landlord and get an apartment set up for the others. If we could give a place of address, they rest of the unit could be discharged from the hospital as outpatients sooner. They had all agreed that they wanted that. 

It was terrifying leaving the hospital and taking a bus through the city. I’d never just traveled anywhere on my own and was glad to have Mary show me how to swipe a transit pass and what bus to get on. Going to shops and buying things was equally overwhelming. I’d never had to pick out things before. I had no idea if I should buy white or blue or striped sheets. How much food was enough food? How was I supposed to know what kind of rice to buy when I’d never even realized it came in any kind but enriched and instant? 

Mary showed me a shop where I could buy cheap second hand appliances and plates and cups. I kept looking for metal plates and cups like I’d used all my life but there weren’t any. She convinced me that ceramic plates were fine. 

I was nearly paralyzed by indecision when she took me to a shop full of second hand clothes. I would no longer be entitled to wear a uniform once my time in the hospital was up. When I realized that civilian clothing sizes didn’t match military ones I felt utterly lost. Mary helped me find a few shirts and pairs of pants that fit. We guessed on the others sizes and got them some clothes as well. 

Before I had gone to pay for the apartment and get supplies, the amount of credits the others transfered to me from their back pay seemed enormous but it was all gone within a day. Even after I’d made up the three beds in the apartment and filled the cabinets there barely seemed to be anything in it. The whole place felt huge and empty.

Mary saw how overwhelmed I looked. She offered me a kind smile, as she adjusted her sleeping baby in her carry sling. “Don’t worry, I’m sure it will seem crowded soon enough when the others are all here.”  

“It’s still more space than I think any of us have ever had.” Since my mother’s death, I had spent my entire life in dorms and barracks. It seemed impossible that there were only going to be five of us there. There were two small bedrooms and a third room that was probably supposed to be a closet but had a cot. I knew Jess and Hallie would want one of the rooms. Ash and I hadn’t really talked about it but I hoped she wanted to share one of the rooms with me. I wasn’t sure if Jack would mind getting stuck in a room without windows but he wasn’t really the complaining sort. 

“Feels too big huh?”

“Yea.” 

“Come back to my place. I’ll show you how to make something that isn’t dehydrated soup and then you can go back to the hospital. You don’t want to spend the night away from your unit right?” 

I felt deeply relieved. The thought of remaining in the empty apartment frightened me in a way I couldn’t quite describe. I had no idea how I might fill the remaining hours of the afternoon. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been actually alone. I had no idea how Mary, who’s life had been so similar to my own, handled her own solitude. She’d been left pregnant and alone when her unit shipped out without her. Had the baby been enough to fill the hole in her life, had she been lonely, had she made civilian friends? That night I had no idea how to ask her any of it. 

The apartment she showed me into, a few doors down, was well kept and very simple. The only real life in the place seemed to come from the childrens toys and supplies. She put up no decorations or left any other significant mark of her occupancy.

She showed me how to make pasta with red sauce and we sat down at a small table to eat while her daughter napped in the next room. There were so many thing I wanted to say but no words came. 

When the silence began to stretch she told me. “Give it time. If you ever do want to talk, about anything, be it yourself, or your unit, or what happened on Kepler, I’m here.” 

“Thank you.” I wasn’t sure if I should be grateful or unsettled, she’d just offered to listen to me the way I, as companion, used to offer to listen to my unit.

Truth be told, I wasn’t really sure what my role for the surviving women of my unit was anymore. If they weren’t soldiers and I wasn’t a Shield Maiden, what were we to each other?

I slept every night curled up with Ash, instead of rotating my nights and I hadn’t had sex with anyone since the retreat. We’d all been focused on survival and then healing. 

I didn’t know what future lay ahead for Ash and me, although I knew I loved her, loved her in a fiercer more personal way than the others. I knew I cared deeply about Jess and Hallie, although if they were going to mary I doubted either still needed me as a lover. I didn’t really know what Stella needed, in so many ways she had become a closed book to me. Jack at least was the least complicated. We had never been in the same unit and I knew where I stood as his friend.

When the food was gone, she asked me if I thought I could navigate the bus back to the hospital or if I needed her to go with me. I said I thought I could, although I still had her write down all the right bus numbers and stops for me. 

To my amazement I actually did manage to catch all the right buses and arrive back at the hospital in the early evening. I came back to find Jess and Hallie out, likely in the courtyard, Ash was asleep, and Stella was worriedly watching as two men in officers uniforms talked to Jack. More accurately it might have been said they were talking about Jack in front of him as if he wasn’t there.

The younger man, who was holding a tablet said, “Like I said, he’s handsome, no visible wounds from the battle at all.”

The older man, who still had his back turned said, “That may be but look at the boy, his hands are shaking as bad as a junkies, only a fool would put him in front of a camera like that. Didn’t you say there was another surviving companion, one that wasn’t given a medical discharge but took early retirement instead?”

“Yes, but she’s not here.. Wait, I think that’s here.” 

The both turned to look at me, where I stood. I realized that I did know the older man. He was Colonel Black, the colonel who had inspected all the units in the parade ground before we were shipped off to Kepler.. 

He’d frightened me nearly out of my skin when he’d called me a “pretty little thing,” and touched my face. That had been a long time ago. I might be afraid of many things, empty apartments and busses in particular, but I wasn’t afraid of him. I wasn’t in the military anymore, even if I still had on my uniform.

He frowned at me. “You look familiar. What unit are you?” 

“I was companion to the Forty-Second.” 

That got a faint flicker of recognition. “Ah, the sergeant of that unit gave me a bit of trouble. How is Sergeant White?”

“Missing in action, presumed dead, along with all but five survivors.” 

The least he could have offered was condolences, instead he just nodded, as if I had told him the weather. 

“And I suppose you’ve left the military on a half pension like the last companion?”

“Yes.” I had no idea why he cared or was asking me about it. 

He just kept staring at me with dark, hawklike eyes. “A half pension isn’t much to live on.”

“No, but it’s better than the slow death of a military brother or the hell of going back to the front.” 

“Tell me, how would you like to change that half pension to a full one, for yourself and all of your unit?. I get the feeling you’re not the fool your sergeant weas. ”

 

He wanted me to do an interview on a talk show that broadcasted live. It would have been such a simple thing to go along with it all, to smile for the camera, to say a few words about the courage and sacrifice of everyone who’d died defending the reatreate, to prais how capable all the higher ups were. 

The speech writer took my story of the retreat and our escape with the Delvians and changed it from a wretched tragedy to something that sounded heroic and meaningful. I was supposed to express gratitude to the military for the care my unit and I had received when we returned. They wanted me to say that I was excited to start a civilian life, that I even intended to marry someone from my unit and become an honest woman. 

Truth be told, I really thought about doing it. At least, I didn’t tell Colonel Black to go fuck himself when he proposed the interview. Part of me felt like I had no choice, I might have been willing to throw away a full pension on my own account, but how could I do that to the others when that kind of money could make all the difference in our lives.. 

I talked things over with Mary before I really talked it over with the others. Jack and Stella had overheard but I still wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. The next day, Mary took me out to get a phone and a few more final things in anticipation of the rest of my unit coming home. The very word home seemed strange to me, much less that I might have one I supposed I would get used to it. 

We sat in her apartment eating rice and chicken, another thing she showed me how to make, as I told her about the interview they wanted me to do. 

Once we had finished the food. She took her daughter in her lap and distracted the baby with a plastic with a rattle as she thought. 

“Doing the interview would be the smart thing. If there is one thing I have learned in my time as a civilian, it is how much money matters. Lily’s wages have been barely enough and I’m not sure how Alexandra and I will get by on only Lily’s death benefits now. Stella’s going to live with and me now. Hopefully she can find some kind of work and when Alexandra’s gets bigger maybe I’ll be able to.”  

It was one of the first times she’d actually mentioned Sarge. For all the grief she carried in her shoulders, she never gave it voice, at least not with me.

She paused, chewing on her lip. “You and the other survivors are young enough, you could go get some kind of education. A full pension, if you all have one and live together, might be enough to squeak by and pay school fees. I know you have said you were interested in becoming a nurse. Jack can probably do that as well. Hallie’s good enough with tech stuff she might be able to learn some kind of repair if she went to a trade school or apprenticed. I don’t know about Jess or Ash.” 

I thought about how much I wanted life to be easier, simpler, for it just to not be a battle for once. No matter how much I wanted that I couldn’t stop thinking about what I’d lost. 

“If I do this, it will all be lies.

“Yes.” She spoke without judgement, although she watched me carefully.

“Sarge didn’t do it, she broken and told the truth during her interview. That’s what Mel told me anyway.”

“She did. It’s a miracle she didn’t get us both into terrible trouble when he did. Had things gone differently she likely could have ended up being court martialed.”

“If I’m out of the military, they can't court martial me can they?”

“No but they can find other ways to hurt you.”

I knew she spoke the truth. I looked down at my empty plate. “I should do what is best for my unit. That’s what Shield Maidens are supposed to do, isn’t it?”

“That’s what we were taught but your not a Shield Maiden anymore Kate. You’re just a woman who has other people she cares about, you have to do the best you can with that.” She moved the rattle in her hand and baby Alexandra reached for it with small hands. While for the main part, the baby just looked like a nearly picture book perfect sort of baby, all plump cheeks and drool, sometimes I thought I saw fragments of Sarge in her. Her eyes were dark like Mary’s but occasionally she got an intense look of contemplation on her little face that I had known so well on Sarge’s. 

“More than two thirds of the women I’ve ever loved are dead. What is my duty to them?”

“It is whatever you say it is.”

“I don’t think I can do this interview. I can’t lie, not when I know they all died for nothing, for charges that didn’t gain ground, for a retreat that was all chaos. The military snatched us up from the orphanages and then they threw our lives away. I can’t pretend it is any different.” 

I think the look she gave me then may have been respect. “If can’t, then you can’t.” 

“I’ll tell the higher ups tomorrow that they have to find someone else.”

She nodded. We sat for a time longer. I had never actually interacted with a baby before but Alexandra just kept looking at me. Mary passed me the rattle and I shook it. The little girl made a giggling sound and reached for it. When I let her take it she began to chew on it with the few milk teeth she had. 

“What if you were willing to do something even braver?” Mary asked me.

“What do you mean?”

“What if you did the interview but told the truth.”

That really would get me in trouble. “How? Surely they’ll just cut the broadcast.”

Mary leaned forward, “I know some people. I haven’t been idle in this past year.”

And that was how I learned that Mary Allen was one of the most active and staunch anti-war activists in the capital. 

 

I talked with my unit before I did anything. I waited to bring it up until we were all in the new apartment. It nothing else it meant we could talk without fear of being overheard. It may not have been the best way to spend our first night as civilians but it needed to be done. 

Mary had come over, possibly because she didn’t fully trust me or the others with a civilian stove yet and helped us make a simple meal of soy and vegetables. She brought Stella who had been cleared to finally leave the hospital the day before. Stella tried to help with the meal but Mary knew her well enough to ban her from the kitchen. She seemed content enough to settle on the couch with the baby, at least she was until she got spit up on 

When I told everyone my plan, I expected at least someone to tell me that I should still do the interview, that I shouldn’t endanger us. Part of me wanted them to draw me back form the brink, tell me that I was being foolish, that we needed the money. They didn’t. 

Ash, Hallie, and Jess said they trusted me. Stella clasped my shoulder and told me. “Kid, if Mary thinks that it is what you should do, then do it.” 

The degree to which Jack agreed worried me. “If it honors the memories of those we’ve lost then it is worth it whatever the cost.” There was something cold and fierce in his eyes that I had never seen before. He seemed almost ot have aged a decade since the retreat, his handsome face grown lean to the point of gauntness. 

I sat with him as much as I could, waiting for him to talk, but he never talked. When his shaking got bad enough, sometimes hugging him or just holding his hands in mine helped but not always. I was worried about him but I didn’t know what to do. One of the doctors at the hospital had given him some pills. They made him sleep a lot but didn’t seem to help.

I turned back to the group. “I guess we’re decided then.” 

Mary nodded.  “Good, because I think all of you should all be part of what happens next.”

 

In any social or political movement worthy of note there are dramatic moments of brave defiance and courage. What you never see are all the dull moments leading up to it, the afternoon spent speaking into a camera manned by a film student in our small apartment. We didn’t know how long I would have before they cut the feed during the real interview, so we needed to record it in full ahead of time so we could release it on the internet. 

For all I felt like I had to say, my throat went dry the moment a young man pointed a heavy camera at me and told me to tell my story. I didn’t know where to being, so Mary told me to start at the very beginning and I did. I told the story of my life from when my mother’s death sent me to the orphanage.  

After I went, so did everyone else. Hallie and Ash both talked about growing up in orphanages, about entering the military, about our unit and how we lost them. Jess was very restrained in everything she said. She never offered any direct criticism of the military but I could hear the quiet resentment in what she did say. “I never had friends, I was never supposed to, until I was placed with the Forty-Second…”

Stella cried as soon as she tried to talk about Cali. It took a couple retakes to get her recording. Jack kept a straight face all the way though his, even as he talked about every single woman from his unit. 

He cried afterwards, desperate heart wrenching sob. I could tell that he didn’t want to be seen like that so I took him to his tiny room and held him as he clung to my shoulders and wept. He hadn’t cried during the retreat, not through all the journey back to Terra Nueva. He had as much right as anyone to a moment of grief. 

Mary recorded one of her own. She held her sleeping daughter and talked about her unit, those she lost a broken shield and those who never came home from Kepler. At the end she talked about Lily as well. She never cried but she didn’t need to. She carried her grief almost like a shield, like something that she had to cling to or she would be lost. 

I wish that when all was said and done people actually watched all the interviews. I know most didn’t. Only my own was ever famous. They are all still all out on there for anyone who wants to see them, for anyone who cares. 

We didn’t release any of the recordings until after my appearance on the talk show.The night before felt oddly familiar like the eve of battle. We gathered and drank and Jack played his new fiddle. Stella had found him one in a second hand shop and brought it back to him. When he played he seemed at least a little bit like himself again. 

When the hour grew late, I went to my small room and Ash followed. It surprised me when she kissed me. Part of me had almost wondered if that part of us was gone forever, lost in all the fear and loss of the retreat. It wasn’t. 

She remembered how to touch me, how to draw me close and suddenly, desperately, I realized how much I wanted her, how much I needed her to make feel alive. We made love on the cheap synthetic sheets of a bed that was ours and ours alone. 

Near the end we got loud enough that someone from the floor beneath banged a broom on the ceiling. That just made us laugh. After everything we had seen and survived, we weren’t afraid of aggravated neighbors. 

When we were done we lay tangled and content. It confused me when she pulled away and went to retrieve something from the box we used to store clothing. She knelt beside the bed and held out something that shinned faintly in the dim light that filtered in through the rooms small window. 

“Marry me?” she sounded utterly terrified.

I sat up and crawled to the edge of the bed so that I could see what she had in her hands. It was a ring of sorts. It was simple and metal and had what felt like a leaf pattern when I took it from her and ran my fingers over it.  

“You really mean it.”

“Yes.” She struggled for words. “I love you Kate, I have since the moment I first saw you standing there all beautiful and fearless when you met the unit. I love you more than anything in this life. I know I don’t have anything to offer you but I swear I’ll do everything I can to make a life for us.”

It’s strange how much difference lies between how we experience our own lives and how others see us. I might well have been beautiful when she first laid eyes on me but I had been anything but fearless. I covered her hands with my own. “Ash, we can’t make decisions now. We don’t even know what will happen tomorrow.”

“I don’t care. I love you.” 

“I love you too.”

“You’ll marry me then?”

It killed me but I hesitated, for her sake, for my sake, for the sake of the future that danced and shifted before us. 

“I will if you ask me again in a years time.”

“A year?” 

So much hurt filled her face in that dim room. 

“Yes,” I said feeling like my heart was breaking.

“Why a year?”

“Because you love me and I love you as who we have been, as a shield maiden and a soldier. We don’t know each other as civilians, as free women. What if I’m not really who you would choose now that you have a choice?”

She clutched at my hand. “I will always choose you.” 

I leaned down from the bed to kiss her where she knelt. Her lips were sweet and warm. “Then show me. Help me find my way through tomorrow and all the days that follow. Prove to me that we can live together as who we are becoming and I will swear all my remaining days to you.” 

“I will, I swear it.”

“Then come back to bed darling.”

 

Dawn brought a full day in a studio, of practicticing repeating a script I wasn’t going to actually say. They put me in a uniform that felt like a costume and put makeup on my face that I had never before worn. 

When at last they turned the lights and the camera on me, I was ready. My voice began softly and grew louder. “My name is Kate Keplan. If there is one thing in my life which I may say I am proud of it was being shieldmaiden and companion to the brave women of the Forty-Second Marine Unit of the Terra Nuevan Military. I served them as best I could and everything I did, I did for love of them. All but four are dead now and I don’t know what they died for.”

They actually let me go for a lot longer than I expected. The moment they cut the live broadcast was when Mary’s new friends took over. They hacked the feed and made a link to the website with my full video and all the other’s appear on screens across the planet. People went to the link, curiosity is a very powerful thing. 

 

Of course, I wasn’t allowed to just walk out of the studio. When the video feed was first hacked, when no one had had a chance to realize that nothing worse than a link to a series of interviews had been posted, they thought I might be a terrorist. 

I was dragged from the studio and thrown in a small dark cell somewhere. I still don’t know where. No one raised a hand to me but a man in a uniform with no designation of rank came and threatened me with very bad things if I didn’t tell him what was going on. I told him the truth, although I gave away the name of no one had helped us. 

A few hours later, without any explanation, I was moved to the brig on the military base, who’s hospital I had so recently left. I’d never been there before but I recognized some of the hallways I was hurried though. 

An officer there did hit me, the young man with a tablet who had been with Coronel Black that day in the hospital. I’d been a soldier but I’d never actually been struck like that before. His blow sent me to the floor and I stayed down, fearing that if I fought back he’d only hurt me worse. He called me a traitor and a bitch kicked me. He would have kicked me again except Coronel Black of all people called him off. 

“Leave her be.” 

“She betrayed us.”

“Yes, but the little whore has already done all the harm she can, bloodying her won’t undo it.”

“It will make me feel better.”

“And give those traitors further ammunition. You’ve already marked her face, and that pretty face of hers is known now. It won’t look good when its battered the next time she shows it to a camera.”

“We can’t just let her go.”

“That’s not up to us. The higher ups will decide.”

The younger officer spat on me and then left the cell. Colonel Black stepped into the small room. I sat up. I should have been afraid but I wasn't. I just looked at him evenly. 

He knelt down beside me. “That fool break anything?”

“I don’t think so.” 

“You’re a fucking idiot, you know that don’t you?” He let out a breath. “You could have had a chance at a new life, taken care of your unit. Now I’ll make sure none of you never see another cent from the military you’ve betrayed.”

At the moment I was just relieved he wasn't going to kill me.  When I said nothing to him, he stood. “I’ll see to it that no one else hurts you before your fate is decided. I won’t have it said that you were abused while you were in military custody. Those Varcian bastards are the ones who beat women not us” Then he left. 

They released me the next day. Someone or other must have realized how bad my disappearance looked. For weeks afterwards I waited for the other shoe to drop but it never did. All of my benefits and those of the others both financial and medial vanished but no one ever came for us. 

Instead the military just focused on trying to discredit me.They called me insane, a grief stricken whore. The official line was that the PTSD of losing so many of my unit on Kepler had robbed me of my senses. They said I’d never been properly psychologically evaluated, that I should have never been given a live interview. Less officially and certainly less kindly, I was called a tratorouse bitch, a rebel instigator. They said as much of the others.

Obviously, a few soldiers interviews didn’t end the war. If individual courage prevent armed conflict, it would never happen. Our videos strengthened the anti-war movement at least. If nothing else, we told our stories and the stories of those we had lost and that was something. 

I wish I could offer some kind of happy ending, say that everything worked out, but it didn’t, not for all of us. Losing our benefits was devastating. We’d all gotten our back pay before everything was cut off and Mary had some savings but it wasn’t much. It was a desperate scramble to find work before what money we had ran out. 

My newfound fame garnered me a number of potentially well remunerated offers for interviews with gossip rags. Mary wisely advised me to avoid those. She helped me find a clinic at the edge of the slums that was desperate for any capable hands, even hands without proper qualifications. They hired me for very little and I spent my days treating bullet wounds and lung infections. 

Ash couldn’t stay on her feet very long but she had a good enough smile that she found a job working the register at a local shop. Hallie’s affinity for tech was just enough to get her an apprenticeship with a local electrician, although she brought home very little money at first. Once Jess she got a prosthesis for her foot that let her limp well enough to walk, she got hired as security guard for warehouse. She looked intimidating enough and that was really all a guard needed. 

Stella started bartending. She wasn’t much good at it but she intimidating to keep rowdy drunks in line so the bartender kept her around. Between all of us we made enough to get by. 

Jack didn’t make it. He hung on a few weeks after the broadcast, until things were starting to calm down. Then one night, when we were all asleep, he slipped out of the apartment, went up to the roof of the building and stepped out into thin air. Sometimes I wonder if I failed him. I was his fellow companion, I should have paid better attention, should have been there for him more. Honestly though, in his place, I don’t know if I would have lasted longer than he did. 

He was the only soldier from any of the three units in our trench who was laid to rest on Terra Nueva. No one denied him a military funeral at least. I still go sometimes to put flowers on his grave sometimes. 

Stella never attempted anything as directly as Jack did but she still tried to drink herself to death. She started quietly enough and was subtle about it. Because she was living with Mary and not me, it took me a while to notice. Things went from her simply being more withdrawn, to her almost always being drunk every night when she came back from her job at the bar.

It wasn’t until one bitterly cold night when Mary came knocking at my door looking for Stella that I knew something was terribly wrong. We found her on the roof curled up around a bottle of rotgut and half covered in show. 

She was alive but not even shivering. We carried her back inside and put her in tepid water until she began to shiver and then we gradually warmed the water. When she revived enough to start swearing we knew she’d make it. 

Stella was ashamed of herself the next morning. She said as much as she sat on the couch covered in nearly every blanket we owned. Mary told her not to be, just to come to her the next time her grief got bigger than her. I don’t know what else Mary said after she took Stella back to her apartment but Stella stopped drinking alone after that. 

She bought the window flower planter she’d showed us all that night before the retreat. Oddly enough, that more than anything else seemed to help. Mary later admitted to me that Stella never actually managed to keep anything alive, Mary quiet quietly brought new plants and replaced them. Stella probably noticed but she never said anything. 

Life moved on. For all the depth of loss I had experienced, I learned how much joy I could still find. I saw baby Alexandra take her first wobbly steps on the cheap carpet of her mother’s apartment that midwinter. I don’t think I ever felt happier than when she started calling me aunt “Catcat.” 

As long as there were surviving women of the Forty-Second, Alexandra never lacked for aunts or love. In so many ways her mere presence kept our shadows at bay far better than anything else could have. 

Jess and Hallie got married in the local courthouse on the first warm day of spring. Apparently Jess was one of the first GES to leave the military, much less get married, no one stopped her though. I never saw Hallie smile like she did when she looked up at Jess, holding a bouquet of paper flowers in her hands. 

Slowly and surely Ash and I we began to discover who we could be to each other. I think that we were right to give ourselves time. Once the pure relief of survival began to wear off we did have our first disagreements and fights. It’s very easy for a soldier to fall in love with a Shield Maiden, who wouldn’t love a woman who always listens to her attentively and never turns her away from her bed, no matter how tired she is. 

While we had had our share of stolen moments, when I was still a Shield Maiden, we had never had many. The sheer amount of time we genuinely had together when there wasn’t an entire other unit of women needing for my attention was new for both of us.  

I think at first she made the mistake of assuming that being in a relationship with me mean that I would act towards her all of the time the way I once had during her once scheduled nights with me. The thing is though, no one can just pour out one sided attention to a real partner like that, not all the time and certainly not when she has a job and other responsibilities. 

It genuinely confused Ash the first time I came back from a long shift at the clinic and instead of patiently listening to everything she had to say about her day, asked if we could talk later.

She was even more confused the first time I pushed her away when she reached for me in the night. She spent half the next day she looked at me with big hurt puppy eyes and as soon as we were alone asked me why I was mad at her. I’d had to explain that I hadn’t been angry, just tired and fully aware that I had to be up in a few hours. 

Gradually though, we learned each other. Civilian life made her bolder and me more open and we fell more and more in love every day. We certainly learned how good sex could get when you had plenty of opportunities to practice together. 

For the first time in my life I stopped fearing the future but instead simply settled into the present and everything it had to offer. I did not know what the years ahead held for myself or what remained of my unit but I knew we could face it together.

 

End

 

...

 

Epilogue

 

Lily woke slowly. She’d have thought she was dead, expect surely a dead woman couldn’t be in so much pain. She tried to sit up and a hand on her shoulder stopped her. 

“Easy there, Private White.” 

Private? She’d never been a private, she’d graduated from the academy as an officer. She blinked her eyes open. 

Joshua, the Sixty-Second unit’s companion, frowned at her worriedly. At least she thought he was frowning, about half his face was bandaged. Surely he knew her rank didn’t he? They’d known each other for years. Also why were her thoughts so hazy? It felt like she was watching the world through a fractured mirror. 

As if guessing her question he answer. “You’ve got about three broken ribs, your left leg is broken and your right arm is a mess of shrapnel I’m still getting out.I gave you the last shot or morphine I had in my med kit. I figured it would be better you have it then let it be taken away by the guards.”

Even with the morphine starting to kick in she could feel just how badly she was hurt. She fought for clarity. “Where are we?” She tried to sit up again, and managed to look around just enough to realize she was lying on a stretcher. They were in some kind of concrete room. There were other Terra Nuevan’s around them, mostly injured. She caught the brief glimpse of a dark green Varcian uniform near the a heavy metal door.

Joshua leaned closer and whispered. “We’ve been captured by the Varcians and were in some kind of temporary prisoner holding facility in one of their planetside bases.”

“I’m this injured and they haven’t shot me yet?” 

“I’m as surprised as you. I heard one of the guards saying that orders came down from the top to try and take more prisoners for a future prisoner exchange.”

Hope briefly bloomed in her heart. “And the others?”

“I don’t know. We ended up trapped under some debris. When the Varcians dug us out I didn’t see anything but bodies.” 

“Who did you see?” 

Joshua rubbed at his soot and blood stained face, “I couldn’t tell.” 

Lily’s narrowed her eye, she could usually tell when someone was lying, but if Joshua was he made no sign of it. A deep weariness filled her. “Some of our people must have reached the forest, at least a few.” How could she ever face Mary again if she came home alone, if she had lost their entire unit. 

He squeezed her good hand. “We have to hope.” 

Another thought occured to Lily. Very quietly she said, “So why have I been demoted?”

“Because they took away the only Terra Nueva in the room still wearing his officers stripes. When they brought him back a few hours later he had a lot fewer fingers and teeth.” 

“Guess I’m an enlisted woman then.” 

They sat for another moment. She could feel a bone deep exhaustion pulling her downwards. 

“What kind of chance do you think we have Joshua?” 

“Better now than when we were trapped under the rubble.”

She squeezed his hand back. “I’ll take those odds.” She still didn’t know how to face Mary alone, but she knew that the one thing her wife would never forgive her for was not making it back at all.    

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that folks, is a wrap. After finishing up twenty two chapters of an erotic lesbian space marine epic, I kind feel like I should go smoke a cigarette or something and I don’t actually smoke. 
> 
> Honestly though, this is not really done, not if I ever want to actually do anything with it. At best this is a first draft and a rough one at that. The thought of actually starting the re-writes and edits on this story is utterly terrifying. I barely know where to start. 
> 
> Because you’ve all been such a kind and thoughtful community of readers I’m going to ask you again for your thoughts and overall input. 
> 
> I’ve kept a list of suggested edits so far and I’m fairly aware of the more functional things this work needs, such as fixing of plot holes, a rewriting of the earlier chapters to match the later ones, some mistakes with characters names and maybe a bit more fleshing out of more minor members of the unit. As for typos and misplaced commas, I know those are legion. 
> 
> What I can really use help with are broader questions. Beyond them I’d love to hear any thoughts of suggestions you have.
> 
> 1) Does the ending work, both the retreat and then the videos the unit records? Is it a satisfying conclusion to the story overall and does it fit the characters.
> 
> 2) Does the epilog work? It does involve a change from first to third person. I could preserve Kate’s first perspective and instead of this epilog do one where she sees Sarge and Joshua make it home about a year after she does. Also is it cheating to have Sarge survive just because I want her to? 
> 
> 3) Are there too many, too few, or just the right amount of sex scenes? There is one almost every chapter for the first part of the book and then the plot somewhat edges them out in the later chapters. Do the sex scenes themselves work? Are the earlier ones too short or the later ones too long?
> 
> 4) Does the Kate and Ash romance plot work? When I first started this story, I never actually intended to include it. Do I give them enough screen time to make their romance believable? Do I develop Ash enough to be a successful romantic interest? 
> 
> 5) Does the book start too slowly, especially in the first two chapters? Do I show too much of Kate’s backstory or does it help develop her as a character. Should I keep the part of the first chapter that shows her in the academy or is that bit boring?
> 
> 6) I'm not sure I'm really satisfied with the title. Does anyone have any better ideas?


End file.
